Netflix to stop publicly shaming Verizon for slow service
Reed Hastings may need to buffer his response.
Days after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Verizon, the Netflix chief indicated that he may back down from his campaign to publicly shame Internet providers for slow service.
In a blog post on Monday, Netflix said it will end its experiment calling out ISPs by name when streaming slows.
The “Orange Is the New Black” producer has been sending messages to users’ computers telling them when their ISP is suffering from a “crowded network.”
Netflix, which has been sending the alerts for about a month, said it will end the testing phase of the program on June 16, and “evaluate rolling it out more broadly.”
But watchers predicted the death of the campaign — thanks to Verizon’s legal maneuver last week.
After learning that Netflix was calling out Verizon for slow streaming, Verizon’s general counsel, Randal Milch, threatened legal action.
“Netflix’s false accusations have the potential to harm the Verizon brand in the marketplace,” the letter said. Netflix’s decision to end the pilot program has nothing to do with Verizon’s letter, Netflix spokesman Joris Evers told The Post.
“Tests are by definition limited in time,” Evers said, although he admitted the possibility that the program might never be resuscitated.
“We are going to evaluate the result and decide the next steps,” Evers said.
Still, Netflix made clear that its fight with the ISPs over payments for more direct service is far from over.
In its May rankings of ISPs speeds, Netflix placed Verizon DSL dead last. Verizon FiOS ranked 10th out of 16, or two notches down from where it ranked last month.
Although Netflix recently struck a deal to link directly to Verizon’s network for improved service, the plan has yet to be implemented, a Verizon spokesman said.
“We are working quickly to implement the network architecture and expect improvements to be experienced across the FiOS footprint throughout 2014.”