YouTube starts rating US ISPs, puts its weight behind settlement-free peering

Google released an US-focused version of its video quality report, which offers users a way to check which of their local Internet service providers (ISPs) deliver the best-looking YouTube streams.

The report is singling out some ISPs as “HD verified” which YouTube Product Manager Jay Akkad defined this way: “If your provider can consistently deliver HD video, a resolution of at least 720p, without buffering or interruptions -- it’s HD Verified.”

The report also shows which ISPs are capable of delivering SD quality video without buffering, and which ones deliver videos at a lower performance, or in other words will leave you completely frustrated. To get to these results, YouTube monitored streams over a 30-day period. Only ISPs that were capable of delivering HD at least 90 percent of the time are being called HD verified.