Following news that Comcast and Netflix had reached a deal whereby Netflix would pay the Internet Service Provider a fee in order to ensure Netflix subscribers have a smooth viewing experience, people panicked and cried that net neutrality was dead. While that’s not entirely true, what is now a matter of fact is that Netflix service performance on Comcast’s network has improved fairly substantially since the company ponied up what many refer to as a “ransom.”
As Ars Technica noted in a recent report, Netflix’s speed rankings show that service performance on Comcast’s network improved in February after declining rapidly in the previous three months.
“Netflix streamed at an average of 1.68Mbps on Comcast in the US in February, up from 1.51Mbps in January,” Ars Technica’s Josh Brodkin wrote. “The average on Comcast was above 2Mbps as recently as September, but it had gone down each month until Netflix decided to pay Comcast for a direct connection to its network.”
Netflix and Comcast struck a deal late in the month of February, so performance should improve even more moving forward.
