Verizon vs. Netflix: What's this really about?

A Q&A with Verizon's vice president David Young. Netflix has been accusing Verizon and other Internet service providers, such as Comcast, of not providing enough network capacity to handle an increase in demand for its video streaming service, citing this as a cause for the poor performance of its service.

The standoff between the companies is curious given that Verizon and Netflix actually signed a commercial arrangement in April, which should improve Netflix performance on Verizon's network. Apparently, Netflix is still unhappy about the outcome of that deal.

Young denied that Verizon is throttling Netflix.

“What seems to be occurring is that there is congestion on the connection between Netflix and our network, which is what is causing the video to buffer for some Verizon FiOS subscribers,” he said. Rather than throttling, he said the congestion was simply caused by the high demand of customers trying to utilize the network. He said it was not Verizon’s responsibility to provide another company like Netflix free upgrades to the service.