From CNET: Netflix is showing once again that it is no friend to Comcast.
The Los Gatos, Calif., streaming video service on Monday warned that the proposed $45.2 billion merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable would create a worrisome concentration of broadband control, opposition that makes Netflix the first major company to publicly speak out against the combination.
"I don't know that we want anybody to control half of the US Internet, and that's the real basis of our objection to the merger," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said during a webcast to discuss results.
Reed's comments come just months after Netflix reached a deal with Comcast to improve Netflix's quality of service for Comcast customers by ensuring a speedy delivery of its video service through the interconnection portion of the Internet, or the pipes owned by the cable giant. Comcast, for its part, claimed the move was more about Netflix's bottom line than consumer rights.
Though Netflix states its opposition to the deal in the same breath that it discusses a consumer-protection concept like equal access to Internet content and sites -- a concept known as Net Neutrality -- Netflix's own financial interests in opposing the Comcast/TWC merger are significant -- and they aren't explained in the fullest detail by the company itself. Unlike some of its traditional TV brethren, at this point Netflix doesn't have much to lose by raising Comcast's hackles. And the merger opposition has next to nothing to do with a Netflix price hike it teased yesterday.
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