DOJ investigates cable companies over Netflix net neutrality row
The United States Department of Justice is trying to figure out whether cable companies are engaging in anti-competitive practices by not counting data consumed through their own homemade streaming services against customers’ monthly bandwidth caps while docking users’ caps for data streamed through third-party companies such as Netflix and Hulu. The Wall Street Journal reports that the investigation has been ongoing for months and that the DOJ has spoken with the major cable players as well as the major content distributors. The investigation stems at least in part from Comcast’s decision earlier this year to exempt data consumed through its Xfinity Xbox app from customers’ monthly data limits, as the DOJ is “examining whether Comcast’s Xbox policy violated legal commitments made by the company in 2011 to secure antitrust approval for its takeover of NBCUniversal,” WSJ reports.
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