As Netflix Takes On France, No Public Peering Fights Yet?

This morning, Netflix is taking its OTT video into perhaps the most hostile territory yet: France. But what we aren’t yet seeing is any of the public spats about interconnection that have marked the content/eyeball divide in the US for much of this year.

After already entering the British Isles and Scandanavia, Netflix is now expanding southward into a half dozen other non-English-speaking markets today: Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, and Luxembourg. But none tend to bristle quite as stiffly at the encroachment of western culture as does France.

So you might expect that the telcos there could find local regulatory and popular support to hold the line against the waves of bits on their way to be easier to generate.  Certainly we’ve seen Google and Cogent have a few tussles there in recent years.

Perhaps we’ll have to wait a bit for video bits to start overwhelming existing interconnection points before any disputes arise. Or perhaps Netflix has already got its paid peering in place for its expanding European last mile needs.

Bouygues, the third largest last mile operator in France, will now actually be integrating Netflix onto its triple play platform. And Canal+ is already in the market with a half million subscribers while others are looking to add their own nextgen platforms to the mix, so first Netflix is going to have to work for its marketshare.

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Categories: Internet Traffic · Video