John Malone’s Radical Plan For Broadband

If Liberty Media Chairman John Malone has his way, Netflix would pay broadband providers for the cost of the bandwidth it uses. And with Malone re-emerging as a power player in the U.S. cable industry, and extending his presence in European cable through his company Liberty Global, he may be able to act on his vision.

In remarks to Liberty’s annual meeting two weeks ago, which garnered little attention, Malone laid out his vision for a “world of the future” where consumers could buy “tiers” of broadband connectivity bundled to “various levels” of access to “over the top” video services, sold at a discount. As part of that, “Reed has to bear in his economic model some of the cost of the capacity that he’s burning,” a reference to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.