David Young

Recently, Level 3 decided to call attention to their congested links into Verizon’s network. Unfortunately, they are now the one “trying to get a free ride on someone else’s network” and failing to “keep the interest of their customers paramount.”

Fortunately, Verizon and Netflix have found a way to avoid the congestion problems that Level 3 is creating by its refusal to find “alternative commercial terms.” We are working diligently on directly connecting Netflix content servers into Verizon’s network so that we both can keep the interests of our mutual customers paramount.

After receiving the letter from a customer in Los Angeles asking why he was not getting a good experience watching Netflix on his 75 Mbps FiOS connection, claiming Verizon was “throttling” Netflix traffic, our network operations team studied the network connection for this customer for the week preceding the date that he emailed us.

They measured the utilization -- or the percentage of total capacity used -- at every link in the Verizon network -- from the customer to the edge of our network, where we receive Netflix traffic -- to determine where, if at all, congestion was occurring.

This review confirmed again what I’ve explained before: there was no congestion anywhere within the Verizon network. There was, however, congestion at the interconnection link to the edge of our network (the border router) used by the transit providers chosen by Netflix to deliver video traffic to Verizon’s network.

While the links chosen by Netflix were congested (congestion occurs when use approaches or reaches 100% capacity during peak usage periods), the links from other transit providers (carrying non-Netflix traffic) to Verizon’s network did not experience congestion and were performing fine. The maximum amount of capacity used (or peak utilization) over the links between these other networks and Verizon’s network ranged from 10% to 80% (with an average peak utilization of 44%).

One might wonder why Netflix and its transit providers were the only ones that ran into congestion issues. What it boils down to is this: these other transit and content providers took steps to ensure that there was adequate capacity for their traffic to enter our network.

The Federal Communications Commission recently released its fourth annual Fixed Broadband Report, as well as some underlying data. The Report confirms that Verizon FiOS delivers a world class experience to customers, with unparalleled speed and reliability.

In fact, the Report found that our FiOS platform consistently delivers well over 100% of the upload and download speeds advertised. When congestion does occur on specific interconnection links, it’s the content sender and transit provider, not the Internet service provider (ISP), that determines the specific links and routes that content (such as Netflix videos) takes.

In making decisions on how to send video traffic to consumers, content senders may have 50 or more routes to choose from to get to a given ISP’s network. When appropriately structured, these routes provide plenty of capacity for all the traffic to reach consumers. But when content senders or Internet transit providers choose to concentrate most of the traffic onto a small number of interconnections (for business reasons), consumers can experience some congestion.

The congestion mentioned in the release was the result of some Internet transit providers like Cogent trying to send large volumes of traffic to ISPs through connections that are too small and were not designed to deal with huge amounts of traffic.

Breaking reports have suggested that Netflix is engaging in a PR stunt in an attempt to shift blame to ISPs for the buffering that some of its customers may be experiencing.

According to one journalist’s tweet, Netflix is displaying a message on the screen for users who experience buffering which says: “The Verizon network is crowded right now.”

This claim is not only inaccurate, it is deliberately misleading.

The source of the problem is almost certainly NOT congestion in Verizon’s network. Instead, the problem is most likely congestion on the connection that Netflix has chosen to use to reach Verizon’s network.

Of course, Netflix is solely responsible for choosing how their traffic is routed into any ISP’s network. Some reporters seem to have bought into Netflix’s claims without question, and some have conflated this dispute with net neutrality.

For those looking for more careful analysis, however, there is plenty of good material out there by technical experts (such as industry analyst Dan Rayburn) that set the record straight.

[Commentary] Recently, the New York Times had a story about the benefits of fiber, entitled “For the Tech-Savvy with a Need for Speed, a Limited Choice of Towns With Fiber.”

The article correctly identifies the superiority of all-fiber networks over older copper-based technologies, as demonstrated by an accompanying graphic from Ookla showing that, nationwide, Verizon FiOS is providing the fastest connections and that 8 of the top 10 states are states where FiOS has been deployed. Fortunately, for thousands of towns -- and major metropolitan areas, such as New York and Washington, DC -- throughout Verizon’s footprint, and for millions of our landline customers, the transition to fiber is already well underway. Fiber-based services from Verizon are available to more than 16 million homes, and soon, about 70 percent of our footprint will be fiberized.

In contrast, fewer than 1 million (about 6%) of the homes in those areas are still getting service over copper lines. While that small percentage (and shrinking every day) is on the copper network, keeping that network up and running still generates 100 percent of its costs. There are also hidden costs, such as environmental impacts, given that it takes much more power to run the copper network than a fiber network. Unfortunately, there are some who for a variety of reasons are trying to put the brakes on fiber upgrades, and by extension, fiber deployment. They think that the old copper networks should be kept indefinitely.

Needless to say, no existing telephone company will be able to make the investment necessary to build a new fiber network if it is forced to keep the old, redundant, and costly copper network running, too. Policymakers at all levels of government must recognize that the upgrade from copper to fiber provides significant benefits for consumers and for the communities where this takes place. The social benefits of a transition to fiber must outweigh the preference that a few holdouts might have for a more familiar technology.

Policy makers must be courageous and enable the upgrade to fiber to proceed. Getting the fiber networks that are critical for the future of their communities will not happen as long as a small minority of residents are clinging to the copper networks of the past.