Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

[Jay Ashworth <jra () baylink com>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Brett Glass" <nanog () brettglass com>

Note that I misunderstood you to be the Verizon blog poster I started 
this thread commenting on.  My apology for that in a separate post,
but here are some replies that amount to "you are standing on the
same rock in the river they are".  :-)

> My customers do not want me to "creatively" find ways to extract
> additional money from them so as to cover expenses that Netflix
> should be covering. Nor do they want me to subsidize Netflix
> subscribers from the fees from non-Netflix subscribers. They
> want to pay a fair price for their Internet that does not include
> paying ransom to third parties.

Characterizing it as "ransom" and "expenses Netflix should be covering"
is, alas, largely in doubt, from the responses I've seen here; it's 
assuming facts not in evidence.

> We currently provide that: we guarantee each subscriber a certain
> minimum capacity to the Internet exchange at 1850 Pearl Street
> in Denver (to which Netflix does not directly connect) with a certain
> maximum duty cycle. But we can't guarantee the performance of a specific
> third party service such as Netflix. If Netflix wants us to do that,
> it is going to have to pay us, as it pays Comcast. That's only fair,
> because we would be doing something special just for it -- something
> which costs money.

It's not Netflix who expects you to deliver that quality.

It's your customers.  Who pay you for it.

If they're not paying you enough, well... who set those prices?  
Netflix?

> If Netflix tries to use its market power to harm ISPs, or to smear
> us via nasty on-screen messages as it has been smearing Verizon, ISPs
> have no choice but to react. One way we could do this -- and I'm strongly
> considering it -- is to start up a competing streaming service that
> IS friendly to ISPs. It would use the minimum possible amount of
> bandwidth, make proper use of caching, and -- most importantly --
> actually PAY Internet service providers, instead of sapping their
> resources, by allowing them to sell it and keep a portion of the fee.
> This would provide an automatic, direct, per-customer reimbursement
> to the ISP for the cost of bandwidth. ISPs would sign on so fast
> that such a service could BURY Netflix in short order.

Alas, content providers probably would not. 

But good luck with that.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra () baylink com
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