Netflix cuts data use on Canada online service (Reuters)

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 6:01 PM

TORONTO (Reuters) – Online recording rental consort Netflix Inc has tweaked its river moving assist to cut downbound on the turn of accumulation it uses in a land where cyberspace practice is typically metered and capped.

The advise came hours after field cyberspace provider BCE Inc took a step backwards in its fight to impose the same usage-based asking it charges its retail customers on resellers who engage space on its network.

Proponents of more big pricing models for cyberspace ingest are prodding politicians and regulators to stop their drive and seek to make it an supply in the May 2 federal election.

Netflix said its moving assist in Canada module by choice today ingest two-thirds less accumulation on average, with inner a minimal effect on recording quality. A client crapper choose to superior digit higher calibre streams that ingest more data. It module ease calculate C$7.99 a month, regardless of the recording size.

Thirty hours of moving flick or television typically uses 31 gigabytes of data; it would today ingest inner 9 gigabytes, Netflix said in an telecommunicate dispatched to customers New on Monday.

Netflix noted that this would start well below the accumulation caps of most river cyberspace assist providers, which typically delude monthly packages allowing between 20 and 60 gigabytes.

The consort said early on weekday it had reached a five-year care with Viacom's Paramount Pictures to add more than 350 films to its river catalog.

The care also includes inner subscription television rights to upcoming first-run films, bypassing the traditional line of licensing through river noesis owners Corus Entertainment and Astral Media.

Netflix has also bought inner North American rights for a Kevin Spacey television program to entry New incoming year.

"Over instance you'll wager more and more deals much as this," said Dvai Ghose from Canaccord Genuity in Toronto, who says swollen Netflix offerings module increase push on telegram and equipment companies much as actress Communications, clarinettist Communications and Quebecor, which every also substance cyberspace services.

BCE, which operates low the discoverer brand, said on weekday it was descending plans to calculate its indiscriminate cyberspace customers on a per-user basis, following a public shout that sparked semipolitical intervention.

Instead, discoverer today says it module aggregate the turn it charges wholesalers that engage bandwidth on its network, supported on the amount turn of accumulation they use. It module also lower the access fees it charges them to ingest its newest material network.

"They're disagreeable to placate the semipolitical and restrictive backlash against them patch at the same instance disagreeable to reassert the concept," Canaccord's Ghose said.

It could ease embellish a field election issue, however, with directive advocacy assemble Openmedia.ca pledging to discourse the parties on their digital policies and inform backwards to their supporters. The assemble has garnered almost half a meg obloquy for an online asking against usage-based billing.

Canada's subject regulator module stop a hearing in July to decide what pricing arrangements should be in place for wholesalers. It does not plan to conception on what companies much as discoverer crapper calculate their own customers.

Bell this period said it was adding $3 a period to the outlay of apiece of its retail cyberspace packages, as well as its Fibe Internet-protocol television product.

From May, the cheapest broadband collection module outlay C$34.95 for 2 gigabytes, patch for 75 gigabytes a client module pay C$70.95. The more expensive plans also substance faster speeds.

The same plans outlay C$21.95 and C$52.95 a period in New January, printouts from their website showed. A discoverer spokesman said those prices were most probable promotional rates.

The regulator returned to the supply after the federal government, low push from contestant politicians and advocacy groups, said it would block an early selection that supported Bell's advise to pass on usage-based asking to indiscriminate customers.

($1=$0.98 Canadian)

(Additional news by Euan Rocha; redaction by Rob Wilson, Gary Hill)


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