Netflix CEO: Strengthen net neutrality rules

[Redfairen]

Source: USA Today

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings urged regulators and consumers Thursday to fight for stronger net neutrality rules, confirming that he paid Comcast for a deal to stream his movies more quickly and that such agreements should be prohibited.

Hastings' comments, posted on a company blog, are his most extensive commentary on the subject since the much-ballyhooed agreement in February that would have Netflix install new servers that connect directly to Comcast's network instead of going through third-party data distributors.

.......

"To ensure the Internet remains humanity's most important platform for progress, net neutrality must be defended and strengthened," Hastings wrote. ISPs "must provide sufficient access to their network without charge."

"While in the short term Netflix will in cases reluctantly pay large ISPs to ensure a high quality member experience, we will continue to fight for the Internet the world needs and deserves," he wrote.


Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/20/netflix-ceo-comments-on-comcast/6669315/

[freshwest]

1. I hope his advice will be listened to, for the greater cause of net neutrality. n/t

[RC]

2. The Internet has reached the status of a utility and needs to be regulated as such.

Mom & Pop garage operations should have the same Internet access as any mega-corporation.

[pragmatic_dem]

3. AT&T & Time Warner want to run the internet like cable TV...

never mind you are already paying for service, they want to charge you twice, once for quality of service (i.e. pay extra for speed), and again for quality of services you use (i.e. pay extra for premium web site access).

[PBass]

4. Of course Netflix wants Net Neutrality, since they benefit hugely from it

Something like 30% of all internet traffic is Netflix streaming. Between Youtube and Netflix, it's 50% of all internet data.

I am a big believer in Net Neutrality, in fact I wonder if our political system may be doomed without it (or lets hope an alternative springs up). However, I do think Netflix and Youtube should somehow compensate for the huge bandwidth they are taking up. If you think of bandwidth as a public resource (like I do), then Netflix and Youtube are making a fortune by gobbling up those public resources.

Disclaimer: I am a total noob so please excuse any incorrect usage of the terms "bandwidth", "data" etc.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57611722-93/netflix-youtube-gobble-up-half-of-internet-traffic/

[hunter]

6. Presumably it's you, the end user, who is paying for the bandwidth.

Even when you are paying for a service like Netflix. A business like Netflix is passing it's bandwidth costs onto you.

I don't post videos on my own sites because I don't pay for the bandwidth to support them. If too many people tried to watch a video at once, nobody would see them.

At home, I pay for just enough internet capacity to support a single video of old-style television quality. We can't watch two videos at once, or HD video in our household. I don't pay for that kind of bandwidth.

The internet service providers ought to be entirely neutral about content but that's not what COMCAST is about. They want their own content to have priority on on "their" lines, even though they have converted their own traffic to internet protocols. They are selling internet bandwidth, and they are trying to preserve their obsolete business model as content providers. They can't do both without cheating their customers.

A reasonable regulatory response would be to split companies like Comcast up into two separate corporations, one providing strictly neutral internet services, and one providing content and competing directly with the likes of Netflix and YouTube.

What I'd actually like to see is a national public internet system, similar to the interstate highway system and other public streets, roads, and highways, "free" to individual end users; wireless everywhere. Unfortunately that would break too many obsolete business models here in the U.S.A., including the phone companies (both land line and wireless), broadcast radio and television, and cable television. Therefore the U.S.A. will never be on the "cutting edge" of these new technologies and we will pay too much for too little far into the foreseeable future.

[Cha]

5. Thanks Reed Hastings.. Net Neutrality! Love my netflix

[onenote]

7. Folks who think Netflix cares about network neutrality are sadly mistaken

Netflix, like the ISPs that deliver its service to customers, cares about its bottom line, plain and simple. Right now, Netflix has a problem. It relies on third party "content delivery networks" like Cogent to connect to ISPs. Netflix pays those CDNs, but they haven't been upgraded sufficiently to handle the demand. And they will only upgrade if Netflix bears some of the cost. To avoid this, Netflix has created its own "CDN" called Open Connect. Netflix idea is that if it can install its dedicated Open Connect servers inside the ISPs network, it can reduce its costs and improve its performance. Not a terribly "neutral" idea since the Netflix has no intention of sharing the benefits of Open Connect with others that deliver content to the ISPs customers. Moreover, Netflix isn't above trying to coerce ISPs into adopting Open Connect. For example, at one point, Netflix threatened to withhold an HD-upgrade from the customers of ISPs that refused to use Open Connect. It was only after it was publicly called out for this blatantly discriminatory tactic that Netflix eventually backed down. Sure Hastings is complaining about its deal with Comcast. It cost him more than would be the case if Comcast had agreed to deploy open connect in its network infrastructure for the exclusive benefit of Netflix. But it almost certainly saved Netflix money over what it would have to pay Cogent and other third party CDNs who would raise their prices to cover the cost of the upgrades needed to handle the traffic.

Yes, ISP customers charge customer for Internet access. But when the demands placed on the network by a handful of companies require the ISP to upgrade its infrastructure, which makes more sense: allocating those costs to the companies that are the sources of that demand (who then allocate it to their customers), or pass the cost to every ISP customer, even the ones that never make any use of Netflix or iTunes?