Netflix Expands and Encounters ISP Tolls
If you are one of the 32 million subscribers to Netflix, you probably have been frustrated at times when streaming a movie. You probably thought it might be your computer and its ability to buffer large files, while you could be right, odds are it is not.
In federal court now, is a lawsuit between Netflix and key ISP providers. The ISP's want to be able to charge a "toll" that Netflix has to pay for their service when they access it to reach their customers. They want to increase the toll fare. Right now, the ISP's deliberately degrade the streaming quality and size. This means that the streaming is interrupted or lost (this has happened so many times to me, I seldom use Netflix). Another thing that happens is the buffering takes an inordinate amount of time to do. Nothing worse when watching a movie.
At this stage, Comcast Xfinity poses no such problem, in fact, there are few interruptions. The same can be said of Hulu. Granted, Netflix is cheap at $7-8 dollars a month for streaming. Their profit margin has increased to 25% and their stock shares have increased 17%. Netflix is also in Europe with nearly 10 million customers.
Netflix reported a profit of $48 million in the fourth quarter alone. Revenue climber to a whopping $1 billion! That said, Netflix should just pay the ISP's toll to prevent second class delivery because until they do, I will stick with DVDs and streaming with Xfinity.
