“After a federal court said last month that the government couldn’t prohibit Internet providers from slowing or blocking Web traffic, at least one ISP is being accused of taking advantage of the ruling,” Brian Fung reports for The Washington Post.
“On Wednesday, a Texas man named David Raphael wrote on his blog that Verizon was intentionally throttling Netflix subscribers and other Internet users who rely on Amazon’s cloud computing service,” Fung reports. “Verizon quickly denied the complaint, saying it continues to treat all traffic equally.”
“Under the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules, broadband companies were forbidden from slowing down or blocking connections to content. That prohibition was struck by the D.C. Circuit court last month, enabling companies to legally throttle service if they chose. Verizon suggested in oral argument last fall that it was interested in different service models,” Fung reports. “‘I’m authorized to state from my client today that but for these rules we would be exploring those types of arrangements,’ said Verizon’s lawyer, Helgi Walker.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: On October 1, 2013, Amazon Chairman and CEO, Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post for $250 million in cash.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David G.” for the heads up.]
Not even a smidgen of throttling.
Uh huh
Well I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but suddenly I get messages from Netflix and Amazon suggesting that my network is too slow to download movies. This after several years of usage with absolutely no issues, and, while subscribing to Verizon’s fastest speeds. So, somebody’s throttling somebody.
Jeff Bezos the Amazon lavaboes
bought a paper the daily bawler
to write his own shiite
of woes to his own manifestoes
to deliver goods as quick as fast foods
bout throttling did he gripping
to FCC to decree
not me you see! I am amazonian & martian me! 🙂
Another truly awful poem from yours truly!!!
Deny, deny and deny…. until someone finds proof. So trendy.
This behavior is learned from top down.
Obama. America’s cruel joke on itself and the world.
Don’t worry, Obama’s term will be up soon enough. Then you can whine about Hillary for 8 years. Pobrecito.
Not this time, son.
Damn. Normally I say “a pox on both their houses,” but you made me up-vote you for the way you took out Mr. Knee-jerk political buzz-fly, F2T2. I REALLY don’t want another neo-liberal Clinton in the White House, so the only upside I can imagine is the horrible froth the reactionary right will get themselves into if she wins.
Anyone have any issues yet with Apple TV/ iTunes?
People using Comcast in the western suburbs of Chicago have been complaining that Comcast/Xfinity has been blocking their access to Netflix. Don’t know if it’s true; but, since they want to sell their own content…..
I love how posting story a where a company’s denial is used to paint them as criminals by a publisher with a vest interest. Pity we can’t arrest and jail them both.
That explains what happened to my Netflix after I cut the HBO/Sowtime cord — TWC Must be throttling them. The past two months it’s unbearable to watch because of low quality picture. I expect this to happen to Apple TV soon as well. They are, after all, the competition.
I don’t know if Verizon is throttling me, because the best speeds are so slow. I pay extra for the fastest DSL available in my location half a mile from the center of town. I just measured my speed as 623 Kb down and 92 up. Like Verizon’s other Texas landline customers, we were in a small GTE exclusive service area before the merger with Atlantic Bell. Our population density and moderate wealth have stifled any capital investments. There are few local employees. Their supervisors are 100 miles away and all important decisions are referred to New York.
We are also in a small pocket with cable exclusively provided by Suddenlink, another tiny outpost of a big corporation with appalling service and reliability. Apple, Amazon, Google, and Netflix could triple the speed and capacity of their servers and broadband connections and it would not benefit anybody in my community one iota.
The irony is that there are wealthy Austin neighborhoods barely 20 miles from here that have been promised the fastest Google Fiber, ATT U-verse, and Time Warner C
Cable. They will have their choice of three ISPs at the fastest bit rates available in the country at about the same price that we are paying for service only about ten times faster than a dial up modem.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Verizon was throttling its Texas DSL customers, just as a means to manage its woefully inadequate capacity.
CONcast has not throttled content selectively yet, but recently put a 300GB monthly data cap on all but the highest level of internet service. Since a 720 HD Apple video stream comes in at about 2GB an hour the ability to let CONcast mine your wallet a little harder is a definite possibility.
Go over 300 GB and they sell you 50GB more for $10.
I can’t speak about throttling, but Verizon 4G bandwidth has not been able to keep up with user growth in the NYC area.
When 4G first came out I was getting download bandwidth as high as 30Mb/sec. Granted I was an early adopter and there were very few 4G users. Today, I have trouble loading simple web pages during my commute home. Verizon has some serious bandwidth issues.
I’ve given up trying to watch Netflix during my commute, but the issue also happens during casual web surfing.
Verizon FiOS “promises” me 50Mbps down/25Mbps up. What I measure varies wildly from that; at peak usage times (9pm weekdays), I get about 12Mbps down, 10Mbps up. This is would still be plenty for streaming HD. At 4 am, the throughput gets the paid-for 50Mbps / 25Mbps.
However, for some reason, Netflix has become almost useless. Even at 4am, I still have to wait, the image quality is still poor and I can’t help but question Verizon’s statement of denial (regardless of what Amazon’s “Washington Post” says or implies).
When I connect my MBP to my iPhone via WiFi sharing (using T-Mobile’s LTE), I get over 5Mbps down, and Netflix streams more reliably.
This is extremely anecdotal evidence of exactly ONE Verizon FiOS user, so it probably doesn’t mean anything at all, but the I am experiencing it consistently, so take what you wish from it.
Eventually, the internet will have to be regulated in some way, as it has become a critical piece of public infrastructure.
Market forces by themselves will always work to skew the balance to the advantage of the most powerful company (the monopolist, or the dominant player), at the expense of the consumer. Without regulation, we will soon have Microsofts in the telecom infrastructure, bullying small, competing players (Hulu, Netflix, AppleTV) out of existence by their predatory pricing and other Microsoftian methods. First signs are already showing.
I cut the cable companies bs two years ago. Switched to out local small guy “WOW!” aka wide open west. Currently pay $40 a month for (15mbps/3mbps) The funny thing is they are brushed right up against Chicago but never seem to cross into the city.
The issue of service to areas of low population density and moderate wealth stifling any capital investments is not new. It has a parallel in the early 20th century in the issue of rural electrification, which never happened until the federal government stepped in and made it happen as part of the New Deal. Until that happened, electric companies either did not provide service or charged 4 times as much for rural service. Now we have the specter of ISPs suing localities for trying to build their own infrastructure even when they offer its use by the ISPs!
But, ever smoking mind altering substance, the right wing continues to think that the free market solves all problems—a chimera that not even Adam Smith believed. Such unquestioned faith! It is a virtual talisman indeed.