The shrewd politics behind the Netflix price hike

If you're on the fence about getting a Netflix subscription, you may want to act now. The company is hinting at a price hike that could hit sometime in the next couple months.

In a letter to shareholders, company executives wrote that a one- or two-dollar monthly increase could soon be levied on new customers, with a rise in prices eventually hitting existing customers as well. The increase comes just weeks after Netflix signed a controversial deal agreeing to pay Comcast -- the nation's largest cable TV company and among the biggest providers of fast Internet connections -- an undisclosed amount of money in exchange for better streaming speeds. That led critics to wonder whether Netflix would pass on any new costs it may have incurred as a result of the agreement to consumers.

When asked whether the Comcast negotiations played a role in Netflix's decision to raise prices, Netflix spokesperson Joris Evers was vague, writing in an e-mail that "the main motivation is to provide more great things to watch, but content delivery costs are part of the costs we have to pay." More likely is that Netflix has chosen to raise costs while people's memory of the Comcast deal is still fresh -- opportunistically deflecting any ill-will over the hike toward the cable company, one analyst said.