I’ve seen so much bullshit speculation online about why Verizon and Comcast are unable to provide unimpeded access to Netflix content that it has been just fucking ridiculous reading all the uninformed gibberish and utter malarkey spewed out by people who have no clue or worse have some political agenda.

So it’s nice to see an actual Level 3 technical expert explain that it’s exactly as easy as I already said it was (since, duh, I’ve done work in commercial datacenters for years and kinda know) to provide the bandwidth.

Verizon has confirmed that everything between that router in their network and their subscribers is uncongested – in fact has plenty of capacity sitting there waiting to be used. Above, I confirmed exactly the same thing for the Level 3 network. So in fact, we could fix this congestion in about five minutes simply by connecting up more 10Gbps ports on those routers. Simple. Something we’ve been asking Verizon to do for many, many months, and something other providers regularly do in similar circumstances. But Verizon has refused. So Verizon, not Level 3 or Netflix, causes the congestion. Why is that? Maybe they can’t afford a new port card because they’ve run out – even though these cards are very cheap, just a few thousand dollars for each 10 Gbps card which could support 5,000 streams or more. If that’s the case, we’ll buy one for them. Maybe they can’t afford the small piece of cable between our two ports. If that’s the case, we’ll provide it. Heck, we’ll even install it.

There is no bandwidth shortage. Repeat after me, kids: THERE IS NO BANDWIDTH SHORTAGE. It does not exist. Never has.

That is a lie promulgated by ISPs hoping to squeeze money out of content providers and any others they can.

As I said in previous posts including this one, it’s a simple matter of connecting two routers together. Just as the Level 3 expert says. Just as any infrastructure type knows.

Anyone who says anything else is a liar. It really is that simple, and something done routinely by non-extortionate entities.