Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asked Netflix whether the...
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asked Netflix whether the Comcast acquisition of Time Warner Cable would hurt Internet consumers, in a letter he sent to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Wednesday. He said “Netflix is uniquely positioned to gauge the risks posed…
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by this deal,” so he asked Hastings to “share Netflix’s views, particularly as they pertain to certain testimony provided by Comcast during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s April 9 hearing on the proposed acquisition.” Hastings has criticized Comcast about the paid peering deal the two companies reached earlier this year and sought stronger net neutrality protections applied to such deals. Comcast has dismissed the concerns and said they're unrelated to net neutrality. Franken agrees with Netflix that the peering agreement may suggest problems and said he worries that the Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal may create anticompetitive effects in the content market. “Comcast’s recent interconnection arrangement with Netflix seems to illustrate my point,” Franken said. “My understanding is that Comcast’s consumers and the press documented problems streaming Netflix videos over Comcast’s broadband networks and that Netflix ultimately had to pay Comcast an undisclosed sum to resolve the issue. If incidents like this become the norm -- as I fear is more likely if Comcast is allowed to acquire Time Warner Cable -- it would have serious implications for consumers.” During the recent hearing, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen said the paid peering deal was Netflix’s idea, but a Netflix spokesman told us the company seeks out agreements at no cost to either party (CD April 11 p10). The spokesman said late Wednesday that Netflix had received Franken’s letter and plans to respond. Franken asked Hastings if the deal would “increase Comcast’s ability to extract payments from non-affiliated entities as a condition of access to Comcast’s broadband Internet consumers” and what Netflix makes of how Comcast described such peering agreements.