Netflix on Monday voiced strong opposition to Comcast’s planned $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable, even while confirming that it was raising subscription prices.

Using its prominent soapbox — a letter to investors disclosing better-than-expected first-quarter earnings — Netflix argued that Comcast’s megadeal would give the cable company unprecedented control over high-speed Internet access in the United States, power that it could use as “anti-competitive leverage.”

Netflix, the streaming movie and television business, has become the first media company to publicly oppose the merger, one that would create a behemoth with 30 million subscribers across the country.

It was the clearest statement on the merger from Netflix, nearly two months after it agreed to pay Comcast for a more direct connection to the cable operator’s Internet backbone. Since then, Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, has criticized the state of American broadband Internet and argued that the arrangement his own company agreed to violated the spirit of so-called net neutrality. The principle states that Internet service providers not favor one type of content over another.