Rachel Sandler

USA TODAY

Verizon slowed data speeds last week for customers attempting to stream video, an action that worried net neutrality advocates as the current rules against throttling connections are potentially on the Federal Communications Commission's chopping block.

In response, Verizon denies it did anything wrong. The telecom giant was performing a routine “video optimization” test that did not affect customers' video experience, a Verizon spokesperson told USA TODAY.

“We were seeing how our network would perform with video at 1080p, which did not impact customers' viewing experience because video at 1080p is HD-quality (not SD) and looks great on mobile devices,” said Verizon spokesperson Kelly Crummey.

Customers of the largest wireless carrier noticed at the end of last week that streaming videos on Netflix and YouTube were slow. In a sizable Reddit thread, users who said they performed speed tests had found that bandwidth was capped at 10 Megabits per second (Mbps).

The few users who tested the ability to stream at higher resolutions such as Ultra HD were met with slow speeds and buffering. But, Verizon says, consumers had plenty of bandwidth to comfortably stream HD video.

The tests would not have affected specific services or apps, but the entire wireless network, Verizon says.

The average user probably didn’t notice, but the idea that Verizon can throttle, or slow data speeds, is concerning to net neutrality advocates, in part because of the changing regulatory landscape for Internet service providers (ISPs).

“Who is Verizon to make that decision? I have paid for the bandwidth, it’s not Verizon’s job to cut off people who want to watch HD video,” said Joseph Touch, a professor at the University of Southern California who studies net neutrality.

The FCC generally bans ISPs from throttling traffic unless the ISP is performing “reasonable network management” and doesn’t prioritize a single service or content provider. Verizon says this testing fell within the bounds of those exceptions because the company was doing network maintenance and traffic was slowed on all video applications.

"Video optimization is a non-discriminatory network management practice designed to ensure a high quality customer experience for all customers accessing the shared resources of our wireless network," a Verizon spokesperson told Broadcasting & Cable.

Public Knowledge, a Washington-based public interest group, noted the FCC's overturning of the current net neutrality regulations leads to "massive uncertainty and suspicion" for consumers about ISPs. Those regulations, passed in 2015 as the Open Internet order, included provisions against ISPs blocking or throttling legal content users sought to access, as well as preventing ISPs from accepting payment to prioritize some data.

Chairman Ajit Pai, nominated by President Trump in January, has begun a process to overturn the current net neutrality regulations and also quashed the previous commission's investigation into wireless industry free data programs. An FCC report, produced as part of that investigation and released in January 2017, just before Trump took office, referenced criteria for "reasonable network management" by providers.

“Before, Verizon could simply point to the FCC guidelines to reassure their customers," said Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, in a statement. "Today, we must look to Chairman Pai to tell us whether subscribers have anything more to rely on than Verizon’s promises."

Salar Atrizadeh, an L.A. attorney who specializes in issues relating to Internet policy and net neutrality, said Verizon’s defense is solid because they weren’t discriminating against a particular content-provider such as Netflix or YouTube. If they were, he said, that would be an obvious net neutrality violation.

“Most likely it wasn’t discrimination and they’re doing a test, so it looks like they weren’t violating any rules,” he said. “If they’re doing it across the board, it’s most like a non-discriminatory network management practice."

Follow USA TODAY reporter Rachel Sandler on Twitter: @rachsandl.