Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Sun Jul 13 16:27:46 UTC 2014

So it sounds like your customers want to use the service being sold, but
you can't afford to service them due to the pricing they are being
charged...Sounds like you need to raise prices.  While I haven't worked for
a rural wireless ISP, I have work for wired ISP's in the days of modems,
Large transit networks and MSO's.  If it costs you more to provide service
then you charge for it, your a charity, not a business.

-jim

On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 1:09 PM, <nanog at brettglass.com> wrote:

> At 11:39 PM 7/12/2014, Steven Tardy wrote:
>
> >How would "4U of rent" and 500W($50) electricity *not* save money?
>
> Because, on top of that, we'd have huge bandwidth expenses. And Netflix
> would refuse to cover any of that out of the billions in fees it's
> collecting
> from subscribers. We can't raise our prices (that would not only cost us
> customers but be unfair to many of them; it would be forcing the
> non-Netflix
> users to subsidize Netflix). We simply need Netflix to pay at least some
> of its
> freight.
>
> >If your ISP isn't tall enough for Netflix, Akamai has a lower barrier of
> entry.
> >Have you let Akamai give you a local cache? why or why not?
>
> Akamai refused to do so when we approached them. The Akamai rep was rather
> rude
> and dismissive about it; we were too small to be worthy of their attention.
>
> It's important to note that the growth of rural ISPs is limited by
> population.
> Even if we did not have rapacious cable and telephone monopolies to compete
> with, our size is naturally limited by the number of possible customers.
> Each
> of those customers is every bit as valuable as an urban customer, but
> Netflix
> won't even give us the SAME amount per customer it gives Comcast, much less
> more (it costs more to serve each one). And Netflix is particularly out of
> line
> because it is insisting that we pay huge bandwidth bills for an exclusive
> connection just to it. It is also wasting our existing bandwidth by
> refusing to
> allow caching.
>
> If Netflix continues on its current course, ALL ISPs -- not just rural
> ones,
> will eventually be forced to rebel. And it will not be pretty.
>
> Our best hope, unless Netflix changes its ways, is for a competitor to come
> along which has more ISP-friendly practices. Such a competitor could easily
> destroy Netflix via better relations with ISPs... and better performance
> and
> lower costs due to caching at the ISP.
>
> --Brett Glass
>
>