By Rhett Jones
Verizon set off alarm bells among net neutrality advocates last week when customers reported that the ISP was throttling Netflix video. If true, that would likely be a violation of current FCC guidelines. Verizon responded that it was just testing throttling technology on all video. On Tuesday, it went a step further and laid out a legal argument for why it can throttle video traffic across its platform anytime it wants.
Last week, Verizon Wireless customers noticed that the Netflix speed-test tool indicated that video data was capped at 10Mbps and that cap applied to both "unlimited" and limited plans. With the doomsday environment for net neutrality under the current FCC, this was worrisome. Verizon confirmed to Ars Technica that it was conducting routine tests of throttling on all video on its network.