NetFlix isn't exactly being honest here either. They could easily delay the start of video playback to allow for more caching on congested networks to offer their customers a better experience. They could also allow customers to queue videos to be downloaded/cached locally in advance. These things would provide a better experience to NetFlix's customers so why aren't they doing them? I suppose they cost too much to develop or would increase NetFlix's costs with content providers. In other words NetFlix is trying to maximize their own profits and throwing a fit that ISPs are doing the exact same thing.
That doesn't work. Such a delay and a couple of other tricks only help against jitter. If you're short of bandwidth for tens of seconds or longer, the only solution is to stream at very low bitrate.
(FWIW, I've worked for a streaming company and one of my projects there involved bandwidth measurement.)
NetFlix isn't exactly being honest here either. They could easily delay the start of video playback to allow for more caching on congested networks to offer their customers a better experience. They could also allow customers to queue videos to be downloaded/cached locally in advance. These things would provide a better experience to NetFlix's customers so why aren't they doing them? I suppose they cost too much to develop or would increase NetFlix's costs with content providers. In other words NetFlix is trying to maximize their own profits and throwing a fit that ISPs are doing the exact same thing.