Inevitable death, was Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Tue Jul 15 19:59:22 UTC 2014

Brett, you are missing my point. I am no expert on wireless links and the
equipment I pointed at might be garbage. But you have a backhaul problem
that you need to solve. If not that equipment, then something else.

You are balking up the wrong tree with Netflix. People want high bandwidth
video and an ISP need to be able to provide that. Caching could not solve
your problem, not even close.

Netflix might function at .5 Mbps but that would be their poor quality
setting. People do not want that. They want the Super HD version of the
video. The 6 Mbps version. And this is just now, later on they are going to
want the 4k version of the video.

Netflix is not a monopoly. They are just one player out of many. You can
not expect someone else to solve your backhaul problem. Neither Netflix,
YouTube nor Hulu are charities. They do not really care if your customers
leave you to a competitor, to get the wanted bandwidth. And neither should
they.

You hate the fact that the world is moving to high bandwidth video. We on
the other hand love it. We sell FTTH and it is a selling point for our
technology over, say, wireless internet. We want Netflix to move on to even
higher bandwidth streams.

I can not see how you can stay in the game if you do not adapt. From
everything said here it appears your main problem is that backhaul, so find
a solution. The solution will not come from bashing the video services and
it will not come from starting up your own service. Even if you by some
miracle made a good service, people would STILL want Netflix, HBO, Hulu,
YouTube and many others. Nobody can expect to get a monopoly, not even you.

Caching, were it possible, is not that effective. Say it could save 50% of
the traffic (unlikely) you would still be paying effectively $10 per Mbps
and you would still go broke. You simply can not be paying that much for
traffic in a marked, where everyone else is paying $0.5/Mbps.

Regards,

Baldur