Netflix Reaches Agreement with Comcast to Fix Throttled Streaming Speeds

Video streaming giant Netflix and Internet service providing monolith Comcast have reached an agreement this week that aims to smooth the quality and performance of streamed content from Netflix for Comcast customers.

This news comes after months of talks of net neutrality, and even more allegations of users having their speeds throttled by their providers.

Netflix has agreed to pay Comcast for direct access to its broadband Internet network, according to sources of the Wall Street Journal. Now, having access to the provider’s backend tech, this will allow Netflix to improve the streaming experience for customers.

The tussle between the two companies has been ongoing for years, and ended with Comcast getting what they requested: compensation for Netflix’s direct access to their network. To Comcast, this was only fair, as Netflix users were driving network traffic through the roof, and consuming bandwidth at an impressive clip.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but comes hot on the heels of the announcement that Comcast had scooped up Time Warner Cable for $45 billion – generating a new media empire with close to 33 million domestic customers.

Similar deals are predicted to go down with other cable/internet companies such as AT&T and Verizon, who have also, like Comcast, previously refused Netflix’s requests for a free connection to their backends.

In fact, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdams already suspects that a similar deal will be struck with his company and Netflix. Via CNBC this morning, McAdams says that deals like these are “good returns for both parties.”

“If you see someone come in with a lot of load on the internet, [with] video, you’ve got to get that in an efficient place. So making the connection far out on the network is a good thing, and frankly, paying for it. To me this shows you don’t necessarily need a lot of regulation in a dynamic market here. By doing these commercial deals we’ll get good investments and good returns for both parties.”

Talks and deals of this nature have net neutrality proponents severely flustered, but there seems to be no signs of this kind of behavior stopping anytime soon.