Verizon Sends Netflix A Cease & Desist, Saying It Can't Blame Verizon For Clogged Networks

from the really,-now? dept

So, yesterday, some of the tech blogosphere blew up over the fact that Netflix had started blaming Verizon for network congestion: Netflix claimed it had actually been testing this for a few weeks now, and others have seen it on AT&T networks as well. Verizon was, to put it mildly, not happy about all of this. It quickly told reporters that the whole thing was a "PR stunt" and pushed out an angry blog post, saying that it was all Netflix's fault for the way it routed traffic to Verizon's network. Notably, just about a month ago, Netflix had agreed to an interconnection deal, similar to the one that Netflix famously did with Comcast, but it's possible that the new ports aren't fully operational yet.

Either way, I was going to ignore this latest round of little stupid spats that have been going back and forth -- except that now it appears that Verizon has taken it up a level and actually issued a cease and desist to Netflix sayng it should no longer blame Verizon when the network is clogged. I'm not sure what actual legal basis Verizon thinks it has to do this, and wonder if Netflix will just cave in and stop with the messages. But, it certainly would create quite the interesting lawsuit if Verizon decided to go to court about this. Update: Netflix has indicated that it won't stop.

Either way, it's pretty clear that even once Netflix has signed an interconnection agreement with them, these ISP's are still not at all happy about the situation.

Update: Added an embed of the actual letter below.

Filed Under: arguments, broadband, cease and desist, interconnection, net neutrality, streaming, threats
Companies: comcast, netflix, verizon