Netlfix ISP Rankings Show Local Access, by Itself, Doesn't Help Much

Though we normally, and rightly, spend lots of time thinking about, demanding or complaining about local access speeds, Netflix data on how various ISPs handle Netflix streaming video continue to show that end user experience of the Internet depends much more on the architecture of the entire Internet ecosystem, than it does on any tail circuit.

The January 2013 Netflix rankings for US Internet service providers (ISPs) continue to show that local access bandwidth doesn't help much.

To be sure, user experience is contingent on lots of elements other than raw access speed at the end user location.

But the rankings also show that end user access networks have a modest impact on Netflix delivery speeds. 

Google Fiber's 1-Gbps access connection does deliver the highest performance. At about 3 Mbps on a sustained basis, Google Fiber is not that much faster, when it comes to delivering Netflix streams, than Verizon's FiOS, at about 2 Mbps, Time Warner, Cox, AT&T or Cox access services, all of which Netflix says operated at about 2 Mbps. 

Mobile networks run slower, as you would probably expect. The thing to watch is what happens as 4G Long Term Evolution networks become more common. 

The rankings from November 2012 suggest mobile streamingl  is as much as four to six times slower than a fixed network connection.