Netflix begins ranking ‘real world’ ISP speeds

With approximately 30 million members streaming over 1 billion hours of movies and TV shows on its website each month, Netflix says it has “very reliable data for consumers to compare ISPs in terms of real world performance.” Now it’s beginning to put that data to public use in the form of monthly rankings, Netflix says in blog post today. The rankings are based on how fast the ISPs stream Netflix movies. Google Fiber is ranked No. 1, followed by Verizon FiOS, Comcast and Charter. Cox, which is a popular Internet provider in the Baton Rouge area, is ranked No. 9. AT&T U-verse, which is also available locally, ranks at No. 11. “The average performance [of each ISP] is well below the peak performance due to a variety of factors including home Wi-Fi, a variety of devices and a variety of encodes,” Netflix says. “The relative ranking, however, should be an accurate indicator of relative bandwidth typically experienced across all users, homes, and applications.” You can check out the complete rankings here.