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.'"

Comments

That sound you hear...

[Anonymous Coward]

...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.

Re:That sound you hear...

[gigne]

In the UK Virgin Media represent the largest cable company, meaning that most people have the option of a BT line and ADSL.

I personally use Virgin cable, and although it is throttled its still 2x faster than any ADSL provider. I really don't like the idea of people messing with my packets, but when the only other option is DSL providers, who don't tell you that they mess with your packets, cable still makes sense. At least they are up front about it.

Re:That sound you hear...

[Le Jimmeh]

So it's all right what he's doing, as long as he's honest about it?

Honestly, it annoys me that someone can do something as bad as this and be honest about it yet receive no repercussions. I don't know whether this says more about Western civilisation in general or British ignorance towards the internet. Internet neutrality seems like a much bigger deal over than than here.

Re:That sound you hear...

[NeutronCowboy]

It seems to me you misunderstand net neutrality. You seem to argue that the bandwidth of your connection is tied to net neutrality. It isn't. Net neutrality is about what happens to packets when both sides of a connection have a standing agreement with the provider about each one's bandwidth. By default, and the way the Internet was designed to work, the end points are the only points with any intelligence built in. Everything in between just carries stuff around in a best effort fashion.

What providers try to do now is to say "yes, I know both sides already paid for a certain amount of data to be delivered. Now I want to be paid to make sure that nothing happens to said data." I don't have a problem with dynamic throttling of all sites, or any other generic traffic shaping. What I do object to is ISPs trying to tell me that msn.com will load quickly (because MS paid up), but google.com won't (because Google hasn't).

If you think Net Neutrality isn't a big deal, it is. As a matter of fact, it is the reason that we have Amazon.com, Netflix, Google, Yahoo or any of the other major internet players. They would have died in an environment where they would have had to pay to load as quickly as other established players.

Its the wrong term of reference

[Zeinfeld]

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.

Re:Its the wrong term of reference

[explosivejared]

I don't know about other people, but it angers me greatly that an ISP that has already been paid by me for the bandwidth I use, gets to turn around and extort money from the providers that I access. Overselling bandwidth and net neutrality are two separate issues. I can deal with the overselling of bandwidth for longer, because overall it doesn't limit the amount of content available to me, it just makes me wait a little longer. Allowing ISP's to charge providers for a transaction that has essentially already been paid for is dangerous and downright wrong. It's not unthinkable that this could lead to payment disputes between companies where some major providers are only available on certain networks, in fact it's probable that this is the end result.

Make no mistake, what this guy is talking about makes me very angry.

Bus Lane?

[WombatDeath]

"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!

Re:Unfortunately...

[pdbaby]

Actually, old bean, this is the United Kingdom we're talking about in this article :-)

So Virgin Is the Enemy

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Billing your competitor's customers

[Jimmy_B]

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.

Re:grow up

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Re:Isn't it the other way around?

[teh moges]

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.