The battle between Comcast and Netflix continued today, with Netflix accusing the cable provider of withholding adequate service until Netflix paid up, and Comcast accusing Netflix of distorting the truth.

Netflix fired the first shot with a blog post from Ken Florance, vice president of content delivery at Netflix, who said Netflix was forced to sign a recent inter-connection deal with Comcast because it was the only way to provide Netflix customers on Comcast with acceptable streaming service.

Comcast only handles Netflix traffic in that last mile, while Netflix manages the bulk of content delivery through its own content delivery system, Florance said.

"Comcast is not charging Netflix for transit service. It is charging Netflix for access to its subscribers," he wrote. "Comcast also charges its subscribers for access to Internet content providers like Netflix. In this way, Comcast is double dipping by getting both its subscribers and Internet content providers to pay for access to each other."

"Netflix directly interconnects with many ISPs here in the U.S. and internationally without any exchange of fees," according to Florance.

But Comcast's Jennifer Khoury, senior vice president of corporate and digital communications, quipped that "Netflix's argument is a House of Cards."

"Netflix's decision to reroute its Internet traffic was all about improving Netflix's business model," she wrote. "While it's understandable for Netflix to try to make all Internet users pay for its costs of doing business (as opposed to just their customers), the company should at least be honest about its cost-shifting strategy."

The deal between Netflix and Comcast is not a new concept, Khoury. "Comcast has a multiplicity of other agreements just like the one Netflix approached us to negotiate, and so has every other Internet service provider for the last two decades," she said. "And those agreements have not harmed consumers or increased costs for content providers – if anything, they have decreased the costs those providers would have paid to others."

Recently, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings penned his own blog post that called for stronger net neutrality rules that would end the need for inter-connection deals. Hastings said Comcast supported a weak version of net neutrality, but Khoury today reiterated that "no ISP in the country has been a stronger supporter of the Open Internet than Comcast."

This latest spat, meanwhile, comes as the FCC is considering new net neutrality rules. Inter-connection deals, however, will not be part of the rules just yet. For more, check out Net Neutrality: What's Really Happening?

Netflix and Comcast have also squabbled over Comcast's pending merger with Time Warner Cable, which Netflix said would be anti-competitive. Netflix reiterated that stance yesterday in a letter to Sen. Al Franken, who had asked Netflix for its opinion on the merger.