Many Verizon users complained on Friday, July 21 that their video speeds were being throttled by the carrier on streaming sites such as Netflix and YouTube. Verizon is recognized as one of the best when it comes to internet connectivity and speed. The alleged throttling made many fans nervous that the company was permanently embracing slower speeds when it comes to video applications and streaming.
Digitaltrends reported that Verizon claimed that it had indeed been testing a new video optimization system that did not affect the quality of the video.
However, it denied having throttled the speed on any particular application or Video Streaming service and said that the test was conducted throughout its network. Fans, however, tested out the speed and saw that they were exceptionally low on sites such as Netflix and YouTube. This has raised questions on whether the carrier has violated the laws laid down regarding Net Neutrality.
Fans accuse Verizon of violating net neutrality laws
A test performed by fans revealed that in Netflix, the speed of the network was throttled to just 10 Mbps. However, the speed was not the same across all of the video streaming services. In fact, on the Ookla Speed Test app, the same network resulted in 82 Mbps speed.
This proved that Verizon’s new optimization system was actually capping the speed on some sites and not the others.
While the 10Mbps speed may not have been noticed by some fans on Netflix, it still brings to light Verizon’s violation of the net neutrality laws put into place. The video streaming service has revealed that although watching its Ultra HD videos on any other device other than the smartphone can require data speeds of around 25 Mbps, the company claimed that on the smartphone, a connection of around 7 Mbps is sufficient for the highest quality video viewing.
Some users also reported facing similar throttling on the YouTube app as well. One Verizon subscriber claimed that he was unable to get speeds of more than 10 Mbps while watching YouTube videos. Another user claimed to have his speeds throttled to 9.59 Mbps while watching videos at 1440p on the streaming service, which caused him to actually see the buffering function quite a few times in the video.
What Verizon claimed
In a statement issued to Ars Technica, the carrier claimed that it did not manipulate videos on particular programs and people may have experienced slightly slower speeds due to the optimization tool that the company is testing. It said that video experiences for its customers have not been affected in any way due to the testing. Customers will have to decide whether they have truly been affected by the throttling or not.
