SYDNEY: Netflix has been criticized at large as it has reduced or slowed down internet speed in Australia. Customers are reporting slow internet issues since the launch of Netflix in Australia.
iiNet also blamed Australia’s biggest telecommunications company, Telstra, for slow internet speeds, which have hit some of its customers since the launch of Netflix Australia last month.
The study from global video quality analytics firm Conviva – whose clients include Viacom, Disney, Bloomberg and Sky – found at least one in four people will switch off their streaming service after four minutes of viewing if the internet connection speed is sluggish or frequently interrupted.
But Conviva’s vice president of marketing Simon Jones said Australia’s broadband infrastructure, including ADSL2+, should be able to support a mass take-up of subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services.
The problem, Mr Jones said, was the internet was “chaotic” and “unbalanced”. But half the solution rested in the hands of SVOD providers.
“Australia has plenty of bandwidth, although there has been a lot made in the last couple of weeks of how its dropped down … that ‘oh my goodness New Zealand is running faster than Australia’,” Mr Jones said.
“But the average bandwidth available is 6.6 Mpbs.
“The reality is you can throw a pretty decent HD (high definition) stream down at about 4 or 5 Mpbs. But because the internet is fundamentally kind of chaotic – there are lots of different players, the stuff bounces around – where you get into trouble is just blindly sending stuff out across the wire, not understanding the state of network.”
Mr Jones said streaming providers could use software which could identify the source of poor internet connections and work with ISPs to fix the problem.
For example, he said, if a service provider “gets a rash of calls from one region that has two or three ISPs I can actually dig in and say it’s this one, this is the one that can’t handle it”.
“That’s useful for them because then they can do a couple of things. First they can call the ISP and say ‘let’s fix this together’.
“The second is they can potentially instrument their system so the maximum for everybody is a 4Mpbs stream, but for that ISP, they can’t handle it, so we are going to limit it to 2Mpbs – then there is a bit of leverage when they make that call.
“I’m not advocating sort of heavy-handedness, but it allows that broadcaster to really get a handle of what’s causing the trouble.”
The Conviva study was based on the US market, surveying 750 consumers. It found people developed negative brand impressions quickly and a third of those who had a poor SVOD experience would switch streaming providers.
