Traffic over Verizon's broadband network has begun to ease a bit in some categories, the telecom said pointing to a 5% decline in downloads from the previous week and a 55% drop from peak levels thus far during the coronavirus pandemic. Demand for collaboration tools as well as VPN and streaming usage rose slightly in the latest week while mobile hand-offs declined in less affected areas.

Verizon Communications is accusing Netflix of unfair business practices and threatening to file a lawsuit if the video service continues to flash messages to users blaming slower streaming on a "crowded" Verizon network. "There is no basis for Netflix to assert that issues with respect to playback ... are attributable solely to the Verizon network," writes Randal S. Milch, Verizon's general counsel, in a cease and desist letter. Jonathan Friedland, Netflix's chief communications officer, said the messages were a "test" that would be used for various ISPs, not just Verizon.

Verizon has pushed back against Netflix's claim that congestion on the telecom's network has caused Netflix subscribers to experience slow speeds. David Young, a Verizon vice president, asserted in a blog post Wednesday that "the problem is most likely congestion on the connection that Netflix has chosen to use to reach Verizon's network."

Cooperation among telecoms, content creators and providers could lead to a unified delivery platform that could benefit users and vendors, according to Verizon's senior programming executive. Consumers would be able to access content from one telecom and watch it via another provider's network.

Verizon Communications countered the claim by cable operator Charter Communications that its new St. Louis County, Mo., broadband service can reach 60 Mbps by asserting the superiority of Verizon's FiOS Internet backbone to cable's DOCSIS 3.0 technology. Verizon, whose fiber-to-the-home network tops out at 50 Mbps, says Charter's channel-bonding technique steals bandwidth from video capacity to reach those lofty speeds.