Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) has presented ISP data showing how American ISPs lag behind the Internet service providers of other countries, thus pointing to the service providers for slow streaming speed. The United States stood 13th in a list of 20 countries on Netflix ISP Speed Index for the month of July, with an average user speed of 2.23 megabits per second.
U.S. in 13th spot
The online streaming service said that in July U.S. service providers offered lower average speeds compared to the services provided in Europe and the rest of Americas during primetime hours.
According to data from Netflix, Netherlands ranks first in terms of performance with an average speed of 3.61 Mbps, whereas Norway, Denmark and Sweden offer average speed of over 3 Mbps and the United Kingdom offers around 3 Mbps. The average speed in the U.S. is behind Canada, Finland, Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil, Ireland and Chile.
Last on the list was Costa Rica with an average speed of 1.48 Mbps, but the country has gradually improved its speed since the company started keeping records this year, said spokesman Anne Marie Squeo in a blog post.
Speed matters for Netflix
The speed of the Internet service providers matters for Netflix because with increased speed means a better image quality along with less buffering in the video stream. Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) has been ranking ISPs on a monthly basis since 2011 to convey to customers and market watchers about the ISPs that offer fastest average speed and also the slowest.
Netflix measures the speed after taking into account the average performance during primetime of all the video streams on every ISP’s network. Subscribers may also experience a slightly below performance due to mix of number of factors such as variety of video-encoding rates Netflix uses, the variety of devices members use and home-network conditions, according to the company.
Netflix is involved in disputes with some of the biggest internet providers in the United States. Netflix has entered into deals with Comcast, AT&T and Verizon under which the company pays these ISPs for offering connections. However, Netflix believes that these costs should be incurred by service providers. In June, FCC stated that it is looking into the matter of interconnection agreements.
