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Netflix doesn’t care so much about net neutrality when it’s convenient

Few companies in the United States have been as vocal about their support of net neutrality as Netflix, probably due to the fact that the company would be affected far more negatively than most if net neutrality laws protection wasn’t put into place. However, Netflix doesn’t seem to find net neutrality nearly as important when it serves to benefit, such as in Australia where the company has secured a deal with a major ISP to exempt its traffic from the ISP’s data caps. 

So much for net neutrality: Netflix has struck a deal with Australia’s iiNet ISP to exempt its traffic from iiNet’s broadband caps. This means that iiNet subscribers will be able to watch as much Netflix as they want, without the fear that their viewing will lead to any overage charges. But it’s also bad news for any upstart trying to compete with Netflix, and it runs counter to the company’s long and very public defense of net neutrality. Netflix said on Monday that it is going to launch on March 24 in Australia and New Zealand. As part of the announcement, iiNet revealed that it will exempt any Netflix traffic from its customers’ monthly bandwidth quotas. iiNet currently has a 100GB cap for its cheapest broadband plans, and charges customers who exceed that quota $0.60 AUS (about $0.47) per additional gigabyte. The company also has 300GB, 600GB and 1TB plans. Netflix estimates that its customers use up to 7GB of data per hour for the company’s best-looking 1080p HD streams. However, averages are typically much lower.

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Written by Brian Molidor

Brian Molidor is Editor at Social News Watch. Find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

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