Netflix Stressing About Data Caps, Complains to FCC

Netflix, in a filing, has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to declare that data caps are illegal. According to Ars Technica, Congress is requiring the FCC to make advanced telecommunications capability available to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion. To date, that focuses more on availability and speed. However, Netflix wants them to focus on the data capping issue, as well.

This largely has to do with the fact that capping the amount of data that can be used by the consumer also limits the amount of videos that can be watched.

At 300GB of data, the limit will likely fall short of the monthly requirements of most households that enjoy streaming movies, considering that 3.4 hours of HD content on Netflix can use up to 10GB of data. Netflix posits that this is unnecessarily limiting the consumer and is simply another way of asking the customer to pay more for their service.

With the advent of 4K videos, which would have a hefty amount of data for its better resolution, it's easy to see why Netflix is adamant about pushing this change.

This is made even more apparent with the fact that data caps may even be ineffective for network management. In a separate article by Ars Technica back in 2014, Internet Service Providers themselves stated that congestion, which was what prompted data caps in the first place, isn't even a problem anymore.

It is also difficult to reconcile the above-mentioned caps with another interesting incentive from ISPs, which is the Zero-Rating it allots some media formats. This is the means by which a content provider may pay ISPs to zero-rate their media, meaning it won't count towards the data limit of the subscriber. Overall, this strategy may even encourage artificially low and controlled data caps.

Overall, though, this push by Netflix won't necessarily terminate the use of data caps altogether, but it may be enough to push ISPs and Cable providers to at least increase the current caps.

On this note, Comcast, the largest home ISP of America, recently raised its own caps to 1TB. For now, this seems to be a much preferable to the lower tiers of data caps that are around 300GB mark.

Still, Netflix seems to be keeping an eye on the growth of their industry, saying that the acceptable data caps of today might not last very long. Taking a moment to return to 4K videos, this prediction may very well be accurate.

Keep an eye out for what will eventual be ruled by the FCC here, especially if the caps are relevant to you as, well. For now, more avid internet television consumers can only hope that Netflix pushes through to the FCC with their demands.