Slashdot Mirror
Virgin Media CEO Says Net Neutrality Is Already Gone
Virgin Media CEO Says Net Neutrality is "A Load of Bollocks". Anyone here been shaken down by their Internet Service Provider? "The new CEO of Virgin Media is putting his cards on the table early, branding net neutrality 'a load of bollocks' and claiming he's already doing deals to deliver some people's content faster than others... If you aren't prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane.'"
...is every one of his Slashdot-using customers running to cancel their accounts and find 'net access elsewhere - even if the data gets sent down a wet piece of string.
The point is not whether companies can get higher bandwidth by paying more. What has people angry is the idea that their cable provider might deny them the full bandwidth that they paid for when they connect to certain content providers or use VOIP.
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An anguished, collective shout of horror and surprise emanates from Virgin Media's PR department: "Nooooooooooo!!!"
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"If you aren't prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane'."
Let me see if I've got this right - if I don't pay him money, he'll put me in the subsidized lane that contains no other traffic?
Errm, OK. Much obliged!
I doubt it.
"You wanna do it without a condom? It'll cost you..."
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Ok, summary and title have virgin, internet, balls (bollocks), and media in it. Alright, all we need is MS, conspiracy and goatse before we have and uberstory.
Finally a company is honest enough to admit that net neutrality doesn't exist. Here in Canada, almost every ISP is throttling torrents, throttling DSL 'nodes', circumventing advertisements for their own, prioritizing certain web pages, and worse. This is rarely publicized until some intelligent people discover it and bring it to light and since there's no rules or laws, it's perfectly acceptable by everyone but the consumer.
Actually, old bean, this is the United Kingdom we're talking about in this article :-)
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
This blatant confession by Virgin Media is the best news yet for the Net Neutrality movement. Because the main argument of the enemies of Net Neutrality (who are therefore the promoters of Net Doublecharge) has always been that "equal access is never threatened", while usually contradictorily also saying "unequal access will be necessary to pay for increased capacity". Now Virgin Media is just admitting that's all a bunch of BS, and they're so hellbent on destroying the equal access for everyone that they already do it.
This is an industry claiming we don't need our equal access protected. And now, at the same time, telling us that it's gone, and we're whining too much because they've already destroyed it.
The enemy has blinked. There now should follow a backlash that will guarantee that we don't continue to give away our most profitable, most strategic global asset, that the public paid to invent, and build and promote, to those crooks who will say anything to steal it. And evidently are now so arrogant that they'll even admit they've already stolen it. Even though they haven't, or at least not so much that we can't take it back.
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make install -not war
Net neutrality means you can't bill your competitor's customers. This is absolutely essential to a free market.
See, there are actually four parties involved. The end user, Bob, buys a connection from an ISP, CableCo. Meanwhile, example.com, buys a connection from a different ISP, ExampleOnline. CableCo and ExampleOnline are competitors, but they have a peering agreement, which means that they agree to share the costs of a connection which lets Bob visit example.com. What's happening here is that CableCo is trying to get money from example.com. But example.com is ExampleOnline's customer! If ExampleOnline's customers are generating traffic which CableCo can't handle, then they need to renegotiate their peering agreement, not go after ExampleOnline's customers. That's unethical and possibly illegal.
I'm pleased overall with my Entanet DSL. All the resellers seem to offer the same price packages, so I use UKFSN (no association with them other than as a customer) who use all of their profits to fund UK free software projects. The business packages are reasonably priced and seem to be the closest thing you can get to a direct, neutral, non 'managed' connection these days. They also offer genuine unlimited packages, although the prices might be a bit of a shock to people used to the so-called unlimited offerings from other ISPs.
The one thing that I would fault them on is their data transfer allowance system. Basically the penalty fees for going a few GB over the limit will add about 50% to that month's bill.
I paid to invent and build that Internet that Virgin Media is now holding hostage for charging ransom against the billing model that made it worth holding for ransom. That's not a "free market", except in the corporate handouts you "Libertarians" love to pretend is "free" because you'd love to be the next ripoff artist yourself.
So I'm not "fighting WW2", a ridiculous comment from yet another Anonymous Libertarian Coward. I'm trying to keep some corporate interloper from ruining something that's too important to ignore. And as a trivial side skirmish, I'm slapping down your nonsense about a "free market" that erupts across an open Internet only because it does have equal access.
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make install -not war
It's only faster until they decide to shake down your favorite site or service. Then you might as well have dial up.
Their brazen admission of these practices is not better than alleged shameful practices. Both are wrong and both lead to the same place if the other companies are determined to rip everyone off. The practice can't be hidden for long, so what you have is a choice between ignorant leadership that may be evil or plain evil. Both suck.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I see this as one area where Google, MS and Yahoo can show some real leadership. Don't hand over any extra money, and if the customer's ISP is a known throttler, then place a message at the top of each page stating "The page you have requested is being slowed down by your internet provider. Click here to find out why and what you can do about it". If the three biggest websites and their other websites (remember that Google owns YouTube and Yahoo owns Flickr) all put this message on, the backlash against the ISP would be way too big. Remember that speed is relative, especially when downloading webpages. Telling the user to expect the pages slower then usual will give the user the impression it is, even if the ISP hasn't yet started throttling.
If I was some content provider like a youtube knock off or something and I got some bullshit shakedown letter asking for money or they'll limit the download speed at my site, I'd note the ISP sending it and put a blatent note on every video playing page that said "If _____ is your ISP, they're purposely slowing down video streaming on this site. To view videos at full speed, switch to another ISP." That would really burn their ass. You get enough of those messages around the internet on high traffic sites and everyone will get a really bad image of that ISP really fast and switch like crazy. That would be the end of that crap and it would force net nuetrality faster than any law would.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
How do you think the cable companies got started? One cable at a time.
You left out one government granted monopoly to use the right of way at a tyme.
FalconShould there be a Law?