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Netflix CEO slams Comcast's bid for TWC

Why Reed Hastings opposes Comcast deal
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Why Reed Hastings opposes Comcast deal

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on Thursday said the video streaming service should not have to pay Internet providers to deliver its content and criticized Comcast's $45 billion deal for Time Warner Cable.

Reed Hastings, Netflix
Source: Recode

"Comcast would love to be the post office and you know, be a national monopoly and collect on everything, but you know, that's not the way the Internet works," Hastings said on "Squawk on the Street" at the Re/code Code conference in Rancho Palo Verdes, California.

"When you think about the size coming together if Comcast is able to buy Time Warner Cable they'll have right out the bat 40 percent of U.S. Internet homes and then as DSL fades and cable grows, over 50 percent of the U.S. residential access will be controlled by Comcast," he said. "Do you really want 50 percent controlled by one company?"

Netflix had entered into a Web traffic agreement with Comcast, but Hastings said he's had a change of heart. He contended that because Netflix currently accounts for roughly a third of all Internet traffic in the United States, Comcast should be happy to waive the fees it charges Netflix.

A day earlier, Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts took a different view.

Read MoreComcast CEO defends Time Warner Cable takeover

"We don't want to charge Netflix that it's different than any other company, but they do amount to a third of all the bits on the Internet. We want to provide great experiences for our customers and we have to manage that traffic together with them," Roberts said Wednesday on "Squawk on the Street."

"And the deal that we made was they reduce their expenses, generally speaking, over the life of the agreement and speed up the experience in getting it to the Internet. So customer performance is better. They save money. I'm not quite sure why that's not in everyone's interest."

—By CNBC's Drew Sandholm.

Disclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC and CNBC.com. NBC News group is a minority stakeholder in Re/code and has a content sharing partnership with it.