ISP Slowdown & Blocking: 3 Important Uses of a VPN Service

Your VPN service isn’t all about encryption and hiding your IP address, it is also useful for a number of other important functions that will greatly increase your enjoyment of the internet. You may not be aware of this, but your ISP may be working against the internet that you’re paying them for!

Stay tuned until the end of this article to check out one of my favorite TV shows that a VPN helps me to connect to.

ISP Slowdown & Blocking: 3 Important Uses of a VPN Service

Read on to discover three more ways that a VPN service will combat ISP slowdown, and increase the availability of media online.

Watch Netflix without ISP slowdown

Some ISPs are better than others, but few are as bad as Verizon. Their infamous throttling policies around Netflix have not been anywhere nearly as publicised as they should be. Their own ISP speed survey shows their ranking of Verizon against other ISP providers in the USA:

Verizon – 1.05Mbps
Average speed – 2.31Mbps
CableVision Optimum – 3.03Mbps

Why are they one third as slow? Because they practice ISP slowdown policies! A VPN service can mask what you’re streaming and increase the speed of your connection in this instance. Your VPN connection not only encrypts your connection against potential hackers, but even against your own ISP.

Play online games without slowdown

Playing online games without ISP slowdown issues sure would be nice, wouldn’t it? Many ISPs believe that they have the right to decide what traffic has priority, just like in the example above with Netflix.

Furthermore, insanely popular MMORPG World of Warcraft uses BitTorrent protocols to send out updates and patches. Since BitTorrent is also used by those who do illegal downloading of movies and TV shows, all BitTorrent traffic can be throttled – even legitimate traffic that’s trying to update a service you’re paying for!

A VPN service provider will get around this again thanks to how it encrypts traffic against even your ISP. When your ISP can not detect that you’re playing online games, they can’t slow your connection down. It’s possible that you may experience latency and slower in-game speeds due to longer ping times, but this is rare.

Watch TV from all over the world

Aussies enjoy their ABC. America enjoys their CBS dramas. And Brits love watching the BBC. What do all of these acronyms have in common? They all provide their content online for free streaming – but only to those who live within their country. Foreigners are not welcome.

So you’re a Brit away from home (as those colonizing folks like to do), but you want your fix of ‘Downton Abbey.’ What are you to do? A VPN service provider can allow you to connect to a server within jolly ole England, fooling the website into thinking you’re back home within Old Blighty.

A high quality VPN service provider, such as those VPNs reviewed on our website, will be able to let you unlock content within nearly any country. Not only freeing you to watch the best television content in the world, but also to open up live feeds in your home country for news.

News to me:- All BBC content is blocked here in Vietnam, and I so wanted to catch up on The Archers.

— Kintsugi (@NickZeptepi) August 10, 2016

Poor guy needs a VPN, it would get him right into the BBC iPlayer and watching The Archers.

Feature image maraga / Shutterstock