“We’re big enough to get the deal we want,” he said during Recode’s Code Conferences on Wednesday.
Netflix once stood alongside internet giant like Google, consumer advocates and Democrat in pushing for harder rules that ensured internet provider treated traffic equally. Republicans, pro-business advocates and companies like Comcast’s and Verizon argue the rule are too onerous and stifle innovation and investments.
One concern over prioritizing traffic was the idea that smaller player wouldn’t be able to compete against a larger company who could afford priority access. That’s no longer the case with Netflix, which is one of the largest driver of video traffic on the internet.
It’s an issues that would have been more important to “the Netflix of 10 years ago,” he said.
Netflix, which was founded in 1997, now has about 93 million subscribers across 190 countries, watching about 1 billion hours of video a week. Whereas Netflix once focused on mailing DVDs to subscribers, the company’s branched out over the years, getting into streaming and producing original contents through Netflix Originals. The price tag for creating new contents in 2017 is about $6 billion, according to the company’s first quarter earning reports.
Hastings said Netflix is still supportive of other company fighting against the net neutralityrollbacks— and that in a senses, it’s their turn to do so.
Plus, all that battle might be for naught.
“I think Trump’s FCC is going to unwind the rule no matters what happens,” Hastings said. He also expressed some optimisms that perhaps internet provider will continue to play fair, even if there are no longer regulations in place.
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