Netflix released its monthly ISP Speed Index for March, and Verizon Fios took the top spot on the leaderboard. Bright House, Cox, Cablevision and Charter rounded out the top five. Four other major cable operators bulked up cable’s showing in the top 10.
Last December, Netflix announced a years-long complexity-based encoding effort that it says allows it to boost streaming performance of TV shows and movies while using less bandwidth.
“At the time, we said the new encodes would result in lower monthly averages for ISPs in our ISP Speed Index,” the company notes in a new blog. “With about 80 percent of our catalog now re-encoded, that change is beginning to impact the index.”
Netflix points out that the group of top performers started moving collectively down last month and again this month.
“That movement as a group reflects more efficient streaming on those networks due to our encoding work. For example, with the new encodes, the first episode of ‘House of Cards’ Season 4 streamed 720p starting at 910 Kilobits per second and 1080p starting at 1620 Kbps on TVs; previously the lowest bit rates for those same streams were 2350 Kbps and 4300 Kbps, respectively,” the blog explains.
Netflix also took time to call out CenturyLink, saying its “performance has steadily slid since last November” and it “now ranks last in the index with an average monthly speed of 1.53 Mbps. By comparison, the slowest country we currently track — Costa Rica — posted average monthly performance of 1.87 Mbps in March.”