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Tech Report: Netflix Accuses Comcast Of Unfair Business Practices

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)— Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has written a letter taking on Comcast over net neutrality, criticizing the telecommunications giant of unfair business practices for the way it caps their customer's broadband usage.

The written critique may stem from a new service Comcast is offering customers where they can hook up their Xbox to their cable modem network and get unlimited streaming videos.

The problem is if you're one of these Comcast customers using the service, there are no data caps. Typically there's a 250 gigabyte data cap for customers, which is a lot. I've never come anywhere near using that much.

KCBS Tech Report:

Reed Hastings makes the point that Comcast isn't capping its own service, so you can stream as much video as you want, but if you want to use a competing service like Netflix, then the cap kicks in. This is where he argues that it's unfair and violates net neutrality and that they're supposed to treat all players equally and giving preferential treatment to their own service versus their competitors.

Comcast has said that they can do this because it is over their own private IP address and network. Basically they're saying that it's Comcast to Comcast and that they're not going over the public internet, which is true.

Hastings retorts that it's all coming through the same cable and pipe.

Both sides seem to be making good points in their argument.

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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