Netflix again hammered away at the prospect of...
Netflix again hammered away at the prospect of Comcast buying Time Warner Cable, this time in a response to Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn. Franken last week had asked Netflix what it thought of the deal, and on Monday, Netflix announced…
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it opposed the deal. “The proposed merger will result in online video content providers paying higher prices for access to Comcast customers or delivering poorer service to customers who depend on Comcast for broadband access,” Netflix Vice President-Global Public Policy Christopher Libertelli said in the letter to Franken (http://bit.ly/QIXQUV), dated Wednesday and released Thursday. “Ultimately, competition and consumers will suffer.” He questioned Comcast’s assertions at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the deal, particularly regarding the paid peering agreement between Netflix and Comcast announced earlier this year. “Netflix agreed to paid peering with Comcast to reverse an unacceptable decline in our members’ video experience,” Libertelli said. “Netflix developed an entire CDN [content delivery network] architecture, called ‘Open Connect’ based on settlement- free peering. This no- fee interconnection norm avoids the gamesmanship and blackouts that plague cable carriage and retransmission-consent negotiations in the traditional video space.” He said the paid peering agreement “is the first time that Netflix was forced to pay an ISP for what amounts to access to their subscribers.” He doubted many Americans have any “meaningful choice” in broadband providers. Comcast has insisted that the video marketplace is quite competitive and that its proposed deal would not hurt but in fact help consumers. It questioned the substance of Netflix’s opposition at length in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1hqw3mr) earlier this week.