FCC to Investigate Netflix and Verizon Fiasco

The fight between Netflix and Verizon has been escalating rapidly over the last few days, with Netflix warning its customers that the Verizon network is “crowded” and then Verizon trying to take legal action against Netflix, issuing them with a cease and desist for saying such things. This then promoted Netflix to issue the following statement:

“To try to shift blame to us for performance issues arising from interconnection congestion is like blaming drivers on a bridge for traffic jams when you’re the one who decided to leave three lanes closed during rush hour.”

There has been a lot of back and forth debate between the two companies recently and there are no signs of it getting better, as both companies appear to be standing their ground and blaming each other for the issues, albeit it seems to me that it really is Verizon that are at fault, but that’s just my personal opinion on the matter.

Now the FCC has had enough, with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler issuing the following statement:

“Consumers pay their ISP and they pay content providers like Hulu, Netflix or Amazon. Then when they don’t get good service they wonder what is going on. I have experienced these problems myself and know how exasperating it can be.

Consumers must get what they pay for. As the consumer’s representative we need to know what is going on. I have therefore directed the Commission staff to obtain the information we need to understand precisely what is happening in order to understand whether consumers are being harmed.”

Even with the FCC offering to step in, Verizon are still standing their ground, while Netflix are welcoming the extra help in their fight against the provider, saying “We welcome the FCC’s efforts to bring more transparency in this area. Americans deserve to get the speed and quality of Internet access they pay for.”