Following Netflix’s controversial data peering deal with Comcast, the media streamer has apparently signed a similar deal with Verizon. Netflix comfirmed the rumored deal with a brief statement, saying that “We have reached an interconnect arrangement with Verizon that we hope will improve performance for our joint customers over the coming months.”
In an interview with CNBC in February, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam stated “it’s not a surprise that Netflix has been talking to everybody, and we’ve been talking to them for about a year,” said the CEO. Referring to the Netflix CEO Reed Hastings at the time, McAdam said that “both Reed and I have talked about it, and we think it’s in both of our interests.”
Few details or terms of the deal are known. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam told BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk that the deal was similar to the deal with Comcast.
The Netflix and Comcast agreement outlines the connections from Comcast to Netflix’s servers at third party data centers. Netflix had reportedly requested that their servers be placed within Comcast’s data centers in order to take advantage of video caching. Previously, Netflix had been using third parties such as Cogent to deliver a large part of their data to Comcast for users’ connection to video streams.
