An executive from Sony said Monday that concerns about Comcast's discriminatory data cap are giving the firm second thoughts about launching an Internet video service that would compete with cable and satellite TV services. In March, Comcast announced that video streamed to the Xbox from Comcast's own video service would be exempted from the cable giant's 250 GB monthly bandwidth cap.

Sony's Michael Aragon was speaking at the Variety Entertainment and Technology Summit. Aragon reportedly said Sony was "waiting on clarity" about whether regulators would allow Comcast to exempt its own video services from the broadband cap.

"These guys have the pipe and the bandwidth," he said. "If they start capping things, it gets difficult."

Sony isn't the first Comcast rival to complain about the bandwidth cap. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has also blasted Comcast's discriminatory bandwidth cap as a violation of network neutrality.

Comcast controls more than 20 percent of the residential broadband market, which means that Comcast effectively controls access to one-fifth of any American Internet video service's potential customers. Given that Comcast is in the video business itself, the risk to would-be competitors is obvious. Indeed, Comcast itself has estimated that replacing its own video service with an Internet video alternative would require more than 250GB of bandwidth.