Andre Yoskowitz
23 Jan 2014 10:47
Netflix reported its quarterly earnings yesterday, showing a profit and strong subscriber momentum.
Profit grew to $48.4 million and the company added another 4 million global subscribers, with the total now reaching 44 million. Netflix says it expects to reach 48 million by the end of March.
The company also used its earnings call to address a giant elephant in the room: net neutrality. An appeals court recently ruled for the major ISPs (and against the FCC), killing net neutrality laws in the U.S., and allowing the companies to throttle Internet speeds at their own discretion. Theoretically, the ISPs can also make Netflix pay added fees to stop the throttling of their service, which would almost certainly be passed on to the consumer eventually.
"Were this draconian scenario to unfold with some ISP, we would vigorously protest and encourage our members to demand the open Internet they are paying their ISP to deliver," says the company. "The most likely case, however, is that ISPs will avoid this consumer-unfriendly path of discrimination. ISPs are generally aware of the broad public support for Net neutrality and don't want to galvanize government action."
Finally, Netflix says they will continue to expand this year to new nations in Europe, although there were little other details.