Netflix has publicly opposed a proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable and has called the move anticompetitive, as it could grant Comcast a monopoly over high-speed broadband services in the United States. The video streaming service said in a letter to shareholders on its first-quarter results that the proposed merger would allow Comcast to charge “unprecedented fees” from streaming services such as Netflix.
Add Netflix to the ranks of those opposed to a Comcast-Time Warner Cable union. In a letter to shareholders on Monday, the company formally came out against the proposed merger between the cable giants. If approved, “the combined company’s footprint will pass over 60 percent of U.S. broadband households…with most of those homes having Comcast as the only option for truly high-speed broadband,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Netflix CFO David Wells wrote in the letter to shareholders. “The combined company would possess even more anti-competitive leverage to charge arbitrary interconnection tolls for access to their customers. For this reason, Netflix opposes this merger.”
