Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

On Jul 11, 2014, at 1:32 AM, Vitkovský Adam <adam.vitkovsky () swan sk> wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces () nanog org] On Behalf Of Matthew
> > Petach
> > Sent: Friday, July 11, 2014 3:35 AM
> >
> >
> > So, if Netflix had to pay additional money to get direct links to Verizon, you'd
> > be OK paying an additional 50cents/month to cover those additional costs,
> > right?  And when Time Warner also wants Netflix to pay for direct
> > connections, you'd be ok paying an additional 50cents/month to cover those
> > costs as well, right?  And another 50cents/month for the direct connections
> > to Sprint?  And another 50cents/month for the direct connections to
> > cablevision?  (repeat for whatever top list of eyeball networks you want to
> > reference).
> >
> > At what point do you draw the line and say "wait a minute, this model isn't
> > scalable; if every eyeball network charges netflix to connect directly to them,
> > my Netflix bill is going to be $70/month instead of $7/month, and I'm going to
> > end up cancelling my subscription to them."
> >
> >
> > Matt
>
> I disagree as all of this makes perfect sense.
>
> Would it be right if Netflix comes to You and says we see you've got a lot of our customers hooked up to your 
> backbone so to serve better service we'd like to connect to your network directly. 
> And you goes: so you would like to become our customer? Sure this is the monthly fee for the link and transport 
> service that would suite your needs. 
> And Netflix goes: well how about you build the link to us bearing all the costs and you gonna charge us nothing for 
> the transport you provide, deal? 
> What would be your answer? 

Nope… It’d be totally wrong, and if I were Netflix, my response would be:

No, I don’t want to be your customer. I want to work together with you as peers to improve the situation for our mutual 
customers.

Which seems to be what Netflix is trying to do, having made a variety of attachment mechanisms readily available 
without charging the ISPs for any of them. Sure, the ISP may incur additional costs in reaching any of the available 
Netflix solutions, but none of that money is actually going to Netflix, unlike the ISPs attempt to get Netflix to 
subsidize their network to provide service to customers that are already paying them to receive Netflix (and other 
things).

Owen