Want blazing fast Netflix streams? Book a flight to Northern Europe Northern Europe and Scandinavia enjoy the fastest streaming speeds for Netflix. This according to the video streaming giant's latest ISP speed index, where Luxembourg (4.12Mbps), Norway (4.07) and Belgium (4.02) claimed the top spots. Rounding out the top five were Denmark (3.97) and the Netherlands (3.96). The US, meanwhile …
Quite. Buffering isn't caused by slow pipes, but network congestion.
Netflix runs an index so it can shame and then bully ISPs into cutting better deals:
http://m.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/28/netflix_and_us_giants_use_europe_digital_agenda_against_it/
If you cut a deal Netflix likes, your rating improves. Like magic!
...you're a city-dweller! Out in the sticks, sub-1Mb connections are usual which will bring the overall average down significantly.
Virgin may have the highest average speeds, but they also have the longest down-times, nastiest "fair use" policy and highest prices.
There's been an outage in this area (London N10) that those cretins can't fix. They've been trying for nearly three weeks. They still can't understand why their customers are leaving in droves! At least with BT - and the other services they convey - faults are usually dealt with in a few hours (at worst).
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"Virgin may have the highest average speeds, but they also have the longest down-times, nastiest "fair use" policy and highest prices."
The more significant reason that Virgin have the highest speeds is that they choose not to serve anybody outside an urban area. Indeed they choose not to serve a lot of people inside urban areas. If an ISP cherry picks the areas it serves then of course it will have higher speeds. The rest will sell to people on the end of several kilometers of copper and hence their average speed will drop as a result.
it is indeed possible to have 100, 150 and even 240 Mb cable connections, BUT :
1. They are prohibitively expensive. My 60 Mbit/s connection (and I effectively achive that speed, even if I live out in the sticks) costs me 50 Euro per month. A 200 Mb/s is over 70 Euro per month. AND
2. We're still capped. The newest 'packs' offer 100 Mb/s speeds, BUT are capped at 150 GB/month. There are 'unlimited' offers available, but small print reveals they are capped at 250 GB/month during daytime, which runs to about midnight. When use is between midnight and 6am, volume generally counts as half or 1/4, but still capped.
I don't even know if we have Netflix 4K over here, but streaming 4K to -say- two tv sets is going to make you burn through your monthly 150 MB allowance in a bloody hurry.
Seriously - who are the couch potatoes who pay to watch these online casters? Given 80 free channels on Freeview in the UK , what the hell is the point? Yes , a lot of those channels are crap but there are at least 10 good ones and a couple of outstanding ones. And if you're really desperate to watch some show - buy the DVD.
"I rarely watch broadcast TV - I use YouView and Netflix. I can't remember the last time I set my box thing to actually record something."
Youtube is free. Why pay for netflix when you can watch broadcast TV for free? (BBC license fee notwithstanding but you have to pay that anyway in the UK).
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