Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX), which lives and dies by broadband speeds, is living it up with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Fiber in Kansas City, where it says it got "actual" average user speeds of 2.55 Mbps in November.
In a company blog, Ken Florance, vice president of network content delivery, wrote that Netflix is well positioned to determine the fastest--and slowest--broadband delivery networks because "our 30 million members view over 1 billion hours of Netflix per month." Google Fiber, which just started rolling out in Kansas City, is obviously only a miniscule part of that.
The November monthly rankings were certainly in stark contrast to the 1 Gbps speeds Google has been boasting and other providers, most recently Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), have been citing. On the other hand, Google Fiber's numbers are still faster than Verizon (NYSE: VZ) FiOS (2.19 Mbps), Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and Charter Communications (Nasdaq: CHTR), tied at 2.17 Mbps, and Time Warner Cable (2.12 Mbps), all of whom, it must be fairly noted, have wider subscriber bases than the limited number of homes signed up for service in Kansas City.
"The average performance is well below the peak performance due to a variety of factors including Wi-Fi, a variety of devices and a variety of encodes," Florance wrote. On the other hand, he said, it is a "relative ranking [that] should be an accurate indicator of relative bandwidth typically experienced across all users, homes and applications."
For more:
- Netflix posted this blog
Editor's Corner: Riddle me this, readers. What do MVPD competition and the weather have in common?
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