Net Neutrality Study Shows ISPs Already Slowing Netflix, YouTube

CYBERSPACE—A new, large-scale study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Boston’s Northeastern University appears to confirm that the fears of net neutrality advocates after the Obama-era open-internet rules were repealed are coming true. According to the study, which covered about 100,000 net users in 161 countries running approximately 500,000 tests on 2,000 ISPs, data speeds for some of the most popular sites on the internet, including Netflix and YouTube, are frequently slowed—or “differentiated”—by the largest service providers, with Verizon and AT&T flagged as the worst offenders, according to a report in the study by Bloomberg News.  YouTube was the most frequent target of data throttling, with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and the NBC Sports app also regularly suffering from the data throttling. In the study, Verizon was discovered throttling traffic more than 11,000 times, while AT&T was detected engaging in “differentiation” on about 8,400 occasions. The ISPs denied that they were “throttling” traffic, saying that they were simply “managing” their networks. “We do not automatically throttle any customers,” Verizon spokesperson Rich Young told Bloomberg. “To manage traffic on our network, we implement network management, which is significantly different than blanket throttling.” Top AT&T executive John Donovan issued a similar denial, saying, "unequivocally we are not selectively throttling by what property it is. We don’t look at any traffic differently than any other traffic." The study was conducted using the smartphone app WeHe, which is designed to monitor net neutrality compliance by measuring online data speeds. The WeHe app, however, was rejected by the Apple iTunes store in Janaury, with the app’s developers told by Apple that “your app has no direct benefits to the user.” Apple for some reason also flagged the data-monitoring app for “objectionable content."  But after developer Dave Choffnes provied Apple with technical information explaining how WeHe was able to monitor online data speeds, the company relented and made the app available for download through iTunes. Using the WeHe app, the study found that on the T-Mobile network Netflix data was transmitted at 1.77 megabits pr second, and the other large video streaming sites saw similar speeds—compared to 6.62 mps speeds for other traffic transmitted at the same time on the same network, according to a report by Gizmodo. The full study has not been made public, meaning that whether or not it included porn video sites in its data speed studies remains uncertain. But with the study showing that heavily used video streaming sites have been the main targets of data throttling, and by one recent estimate as much as 37 percent of online data traffic is generated by porn, to find that porn sites are also being heavily throttled would be an unsurprising result. Photo By Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons