The effort by Canada's communications industry to contain Netflix Inc. appears to be working.
The fast-growing online streaming service from California again reported impressive subscriber growth in the last quarter, up 63% over the past year to 23.6 million. However, Netflix reported only 290,000 Canadian adds, below analysts expectations.
"Lack of subscriber growth in Canada was the only real surprise in the quarter," Heath Terry, analyst at Canaccord Genuity, said. That figure is well down from the 510,000 Netflix added between December and September when it launched in Canada.
It may be due to stringent bandwidth caps or "thresholds" the country's largest Internet providers have upheld despite exploding bandwidth demand.
"It's clearly having an impact," one U.S. stock analyst said of so-called "usage-based billing", or UBB, noting the net cost to the Canadian subscriber is generally higher as customers incur additional overage fees once their initial monthly data allotment is exhausted.
The fast-growing online streaming service from California again reported impressive subscriber growth in the last quarter, up 63% over the past year to 23.6 million. However, Netflix reported only 290,000 Canadian adds, below analysts expectations.
"Lack of subscriber growth in Canada was the only real surprise in the quarter," Heath Terry, analyst at Canaccord Genuity, said. That figure is well down from the 510,000 Netflix added between December and September when it launched in Canada.
It may be due to stringent bandwidth caps or "thresholds" the country's largest Internet providers have upheld despite exploding bandwidth demand.
"It's clearly having an impact," one U.S. stock analyst said of so-called "usage-based billing", or UBB, noting the net cost to the Canadian subscriber is generally higher as customers incur additional overage fees once their initial monthly data allotment is exhausted.