Netflix Not Buying Comcast Excuse about Xfinity Data

In a letter to investors, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings suggested that Comcast was competing unfairly in the streaming-video sector.

As part of his company's first-quarter earnings report, Hastings wrote that Comcast was providing the company's Xfinity Web-video service a competitive advantage not offered to Netflix or other competitors. "Comcast caps its residential broadband customers at 250 gigabytes per month," Hastings wrote. "On the Xbox the Netflix app, the Hulu app, and the HBO GO app, are all subject to this cap. But Comcast has decided that its own Xfinity Xbox app is not subject to this 250 gigabyte cap. This is not neutral in any sense." Hastings has begun to regularly complain in public about Comcast's decision not to count Xfinity's data against the company's cap. Netflix doesn't typically criticize competitors in public so this is likely a sign that the issue is important to the Web's top video service.