The idea behind net neutrality is that all traffic on the internet is treated equally, meaning that you can’t pay money to ensure that your content is delivered faster. However it seems that Verizon has recently been caught trying to blur those lines during the week, as customers have started noticing that their connection to Netflix might be throttled.According to reports, customers noticed that they were getting 10Mbps speeds for Netflix while using the company’s Fast.com speed test. It turns out that their fears were partially true when the folks at ArsTechnica reached out to the carrier to confirm. Ars has conducted their own testing and found out that this was indeed the case. They are not alone as other publications such as Android Police are reporting similar results.
However like we said, it is only partially true because while Verizon has since admitted to limiting the speed for platforms like Netflix (some users are claiming YouTube is affected too), they are only doing so as part of a “temporary test” that will optimize videos on their network. In a statement provided to Ars by a Verizon spokesperson, “We’ve been doing network testing over the past few days to optimize the performance of video applications on our network. The testing should be completed shortly. The customer video experience was not affected.”
That being said, 10Mbps isn’t necessarily slow and should be more than sufficient to watch Netflix’s videos, but hopefully this testing will soon be completed and we’ll see things go back to normal.