Verizon Video-Throttling Allegations Show Need for Net Neutrality Rules and an FCC That Will Enforce Them

WASHINGTON — On Thursday and Friday, news reports documented customers’ claims that Verizon Wireless is throttling video streaming on the company’s mobile network.

When asked for comment, Verizon Wireless suggested that the practice was merely a temporary network test with no impact on user experience, but the company also seemed to confirm that it was indeed optimizing video streams. ‘Optimization’ is wireless carriers’ preferred term for slowing down, reshaping or degrading video traffic that customers request using the mobile-data plans they have purchased.

Verizon Wireless customers diagnosing this issue in online user forums reported slowdowns for sites and apps like Netflix and YouTube. In response to press inquiries, Verizon Wireless said that any “optimization” also applies to its own proprietary streaming-video offerings, such as the carrier’s little-known go90 video service.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is attempting to roll back the agency’s open-internet rules and the legal authority they’re based on. But those rules clearly specify that broadband providers may not “impair or degrade lawful internet traffic on the basis of internet content, application, or service” unless that degradation involves reasonable network management for technical purposes. The 2015 FCC decision adopting those rules made it clear that degrading an entire class of applications, such as all video applications, “would violate the bright-line no-throttling rule.”

Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood made the following statement:

“Before Ajit Pai tears down the FCC’s open-internet rules as he’s promised to do, he should take a look at practices that demonstrate the need for these safeguards — and for a watchdog willing to enforce them.

“It’s not yet clear exactly what Verizon Wireless may be doing to its customers, but it is clear that those customers are having issues with the wireless-broadband connections for which they pay so dearly.

“Verizon’s preliminary but shifting explanations have been unsatisfying, to say the least. While claiming not to manipulate the content their users request, Verizon also seems to admit that it’s throttling — or what the carrier euphemistically calls optimizing — all video, including its own.

“In the end, we have the same questions for Verizon that we had for other wireless carriers that have gone down this path. Ajit Pai should be asking these questions too, not burying his head in the sand.

“If Verizon’s supposedly first-rate mobile network can’t handle the load, why is it picking on video streaming instead of imposing a speed limit that applies to any bandwidth-intensive apps? Net Neutrality rules allow for reasonable network management applied in a neutral fashion. It doesn’t allow broadband providers to pick and choose which kinds of apps work well, and which don’t.”