Verizon network testing is said to be the cause of video throttling after complaints from subscribers were pouring in that videos on Netflix were being capped. According to a Verizon spokesperson, who cites videos on the network being slowed, and not just Netflix, says that it has been conducting recent tests with its network that has caused video streams to be throttled, thus resulting in subscribers experiencing issues while trying to watch videos through services like Netflix and YouTube.
Further expanding on the situation, Verizon said that although there was a 10Mbps cap that was being utilized for the testing period, customers shouldn’t have noticed any problems or changes in the quality of videos streams, mentioning that Full HD videos with a 1080p resolution “look great” with speeds that reach 10Mbps for download. Of course, citing how great videos look with a certain download speed and that the cap shouldn’t have affected customers doesn’t take away from the fact that customers were actually being affected. While it was initially believed by subscribers that Verizon may have been specifically targeting Netflix during these tests and imposing a cap on the speeds for when videos were being streamed through the service, Verizon maintains that the cap was casting a wide net and that it was for all video services on its network.
Verizon isn’t calling these caps throttling, and is instead referring to them as optimization that were needed for the testing of the network, and while Verizon states that optimization was across the board on all video applications and not just Netflix, it’s reported that users were seeing measured lower speeds for Netflix, which would go against the current laws and regulation of Title II that require network data traffic to be treated the same regardless of which service is being used. For those Verizon customers which were seeing caps with video streams, Verizon’s test is supposed to be completed soon according to the carrier, though Verizon didn’t mention how long “soon” is, so it could continue through the rest of the day or even the rest of the weekend. That being said, it’s possible and likely that the former will be the case, as if it were to take longer than a few more hours Verizon may have said as much.