AT&T ‘Outraged’ at Netflix Throttling

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NetflixReaction was swift to the Netflix admission that it’s throttling video streaming for some customers.


When T-Mobile introduced Binge On in November, which offers unlimited video streaming from some services like Netflix and Hulu without affecting consumer’s data caps, T-Mobile heard criticism from all sides; meantime, customers didn’t like the 480p video data cap.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere has defended the feature and said rivals cap Netflix streams for users.

It turns out Netflix was capping mobile video streams on AT&T and Verizon to 600 Kbps for five years, reports the Wall Street Journal, “to protect our members from overage charges when they exceed mobile-data caps.”

It doesn’t limit video on Sprint or T-Mobile because neither company charges for data overages, reports Digital Trends.

Verizon said it provided video streams to its users at the resolution the service provided them.

AT&T, however, was “outraged” to learn Netflix is apparently throttling video for their AT&T customers without their knowledge or consent.”

Netflix plans to introduce a “data saver” feature in May that allows mobile users to increase or decrease video quality based on how much data they want to use.

The topic is interesting for broadcast owners to watch as it gets to how their content could potentially be controlled, in some cases, by distributers.