Verizon threat quiets Netflix

SAN FRANCISCO — Netflix will ease up on a monthlong finger-pointing campaign that blamed Verizon and other Internet service providers for problems with its video subscription service.

The decision, announced in a Monday blog post, follows a legal threat issued by Verizon last week.

Netflix is feuding with Internet search providers such as Verizon and Comcast, saying they aren’t doing enough to deliver the content that their subscribers want. In many cases, subscribers to high-speed Internet services are trying to stream Netflix videos, which generate about one-third of online traffic in the U.S. during evening hours.

The inadequacies of the Internet services often caused glitches in online video streams, according to Netflix. To drive that point home to its users, Netflix has been sending notices to some subscribers that assert congestion on networks operated by Verizon and other Internet service providers is hurting video quality.

But Verizon, Comcast and others trace the video problems to the way that Netflix has chosen to deliver some of its content through intermediaries, a theory that Netflix ridiculed again Monday.

Blaming Netflix for the network congestion “is like blaming drivers on a bridge for traffic jams when you’re the one who decided to leave three lanes closed during rush hour,” Netflix general counsel David Hyman wrote in a Monday letter to his counterpart at Verizon.