Other people apparently had (still have?) these issues:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/CPW7r...

http://lifehacker.com/use-a-vpn-to-bypass-your-isps-throttli...

You can search for more. While it could be a coincidence that somehow after switching poviders Youtube fixed their servers at the same time and got faster, I'd have to believe it was because of Verizon.

Someone from a Verizon forum remember mentioned, defending them, it could have been Google not paying for peering with Verizon enough. But I consider that still Verizon's fault. I don't really care about the details, I was paying a hefty sum to Verizon for Internet connectivity and not getting it. However they setup their peering agreements is their problem, I pay to not have to know that.

Comcast and Verizion discovered they could use their monopoly position to sell both ends of the pipe.

Comcast I know went through and systematically shut down private interchanges with major content providers and also refused to upgrade public peering points. There were some peering points that we're seeing 10%+ packet loss. The result was terrible performance to any provider who didn't buy "internet access" from Comcast even when the only access that was needed was to Comcast's own customers.

A friend worked as a peering coordinator for a major content provider at the time and nobody had ever asked to be paid to deliver content to their own customers before. This created a standoff and I'm not sure how it ended but I believe the content providers caved.

Of course I'm pretty sure this is what was the spurred Google Fiber. One thing that Google seems really good at is to ensure that nobody can use their monopoly position to cut them off from the customer (Android, Chrome, Fiber).

Time Warner Cable in NC throttled it for me. I was only able to watch YouTube in HD through my school's VPN. How backwards is that?

I can watch YouTube in real time with little latency and no buffeting on 3G. Any landline not matching that is a scam.

Comcast throttled me. Basically in mid 2000's i paid about $60 for internet and no issues, then couple years ago i noticed severe throttling for youtube and other sites. Then I upgraded to their business class for about $110 a month for the same speeds and no throttling. They were playing games. It's BS.

You can check here: https://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/

Google "ISP throttle youtube"... it is not hard to imagine isp's doing this a few years ago. My perception of youtube buffering "all. the. time." wasn't that long ago. I am relatively certain Comcast was throttling at the time, but I don't think they are these days.

I've never noticed any throttling on YouTube (I've had FiOS in Baltimore and now in D.C.). I get a rock solid 140 mbps on Netflix's fast.com, even during primetime. 140/170 on speedtest.com.

anecdotal but when I had fios they were doing some odd routing for youtube which made it appear that they were throttling, when in reality it was likely a bad peering agreement.