Regrets from Netflix After Launch in Australia

Anyone who is a subscriber of Netflix Australia with iiNet or Optus should continue enjoying unlimited streaming as long as he can.

In the month of March, Netflix was launched in Australia, and a special deal was given to customers who were connected from two ISPs. The deal was that without counting towards their montly data limit, customers could stream unlimited shows.

Netflix regrets the decision, and calls it against their basic thinking.

In the quarterly earnings report, Netflix issued an investor note saying that the deal is against net neutrality which is their basic thinking.

The note said, “Data caps are bad for customers and they inhibit Internet innovation. We are participating in ISP programs in order to protect our new customers from data caps. Though data caps is common in Australia, the ISP programs will effectively disregard the discrimination among video services some of which are capped and some are not.”

“We should have not done it before, and we will not do it again. In good time, majority of fixed-line ISPs are eliminating or raising data caps which is similar to our belief that ISPs ought to provide excellent video for every service in the market and allow customer to choose.”

 
The net neutrality

Open Internet or net neutrality is a notion that all data line and traffic should be treated equally, and no difference should be made to customers on the basis of ISP they are registered to. Without that, ISPs would divide internet into slow and fast lanes as they will be charging users more for better internet speeds.

This is will also allow ISPs to give preference to websites that they either make money from or they own. It is an important issue in US where some legislaters are trying to allow internet providers to do that. However, Netflix believes in net neutrality.
Reed Hastings says

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told Gizmodo Australia before launching in Australia, “There is no reson for data caps. We want to make the internet unmetered. The capped model is antiquated: we want to make it about speed. 10Mbps will cost more than 1Mbps, and 50Mbps will cost more than 10Mbps and that makes sense.”

“Historically, there was so little contenct in Australia that many users went over the international links and those are pretty expensive, but now there’s more and more content and content caching in Australia.”

 
Netflix reaffirmed its commitment to net neutrality in its letter to investors.

“We support strong net neutrality across the globe, allowing all consumers to enjoy the Internet access they pay for, without ISPs blocking, throttling, or influencing content int he last mile or at interconnection points,” the letter states.

Regrets from Netflix After Launch in Australia