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Comcast Level 3 Netflix dispute update – calls made on US Government to regulate peering #deappg

Last week I posted on the Level3 Comcast Netflix dispute. This is where, despite an existing peering arrangement, cable operator Comcast wants to charge Level 3 for carrying Netflix traffic over its network to Comcast customers (hope you followed that one).

Calls have now been made by New America Foundation, Media Access Project and Free Press for the US Authorities to investigate this deal and to consider taking a regulatory position in respect of how such network deals are constructed.

The developing issue is that Comcast, with it’s 16 million cable customers is also a provider of content and that it has notionally been losing customers to alt content provider Netflix. By charging Level 3 additional costs for providing cable customers with access to Netflix content the assertion is that Comcast is potentially harming the market and breaking (unwritten) net neutrality rules.

I’m not commenting here – just reporting. Comcast is pointing to significant cost increases associated with carrying Netflix traffic. This is is going to be an interesting one to follow and the ultimate outcome could well represent a significant milestone in the history of the internet.

Netflix, Comcast, Level 3 and Net Neutrality #deappg @edvaizey

The Net Neutrality debate in full swing: Comcast wants to charge Level 3 for the delivery of the Netflix content over its network because such content represents a disproportionately high amount of traffic. What gives?

There’s a very interesting row going on over the pond concerning who pays for network access that has a useful contribution to the Net Neutrality debate in the UK. I am a late arrival here but it is certainly worth recording.

In a nutshell US video streaming provider Netflix recently awarded its content delivery contract to global network operator Level 3. A great many of Netflix customers use Comcast as their ISP. Comcast and Level 3 have a peering agreement whereby they carry each other’s traffic free of charge.

Comcast now wants to charge Level 3 for the delivery of the content over its network because Netflix represents a disproportionately high amount of traffic.

Level 3 is trying to get the US Authorities involved with a Net Neutrality angle. Comcast does have a fair point to make because the Level3/Netflix traffic amounts to 27 x 10Gbit network ports – 2 times its existing traffic levels and 5 x the level of traffic that Comcast sends to Level 3.

This is a beauty and mirrors public conversations going on in the UK including Ed Vaizey’s recent announcement that ISPs should be left to sort out their own commercial arrangements for content delivery – an announcement that subsequently with retrospective caveats (clarifications?!) by the Minister.

I’m not going to provide any links to other sources here – a Google search for “netflix level 3” yields 585,000 results. This could provide us with a precedent that will influence other commercial discussions and, no doubt public debate in the UK.