UK Minister Backs 'Two-Speed' Internet

Darkon writes "UK Culture minister Ed Vaizey has backed a 'two-speed internet', letting service providers charge content makers and customers for 'fast lane' access. It paves the way for an end to 'net neutrality' — with heavy bandwidth users like Google and the BBC likely to face a bill for the pipes they use."

Comments

BBC and Virgin Media

[Inda]

Let me get this right:

The BBC, who I have to pay by law, will have to pay Virgin Media, my ISP, who I already pay.

My money is going to who for what exactly?

Re:Confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the poor ISPs are only getting paid by everyone involved once.

Re:how will they do this?

[durrr]

Oh no, it makes sense to intentionally cripple the presumably cheaper lower tier products when they have a nice and shiny, and more expensive, high tier product to offer when you get fed up, nevermind that the actual cost for the provider is the same, raional thought and logic have never been a problem for a good business plan.
As for packet inspection, a perfect oppotunity to implement it widely, just wait until they decide to put noninspectable packages in the not-moving-at-all-lane-until-key-provided.

Re:Consensus?

[lmoelleb]

And that is how we ended up with the FTP over VOIP protocol.

Re:Newspeak

[TheRaven64]

Actually, they don't. Google has peering agreements in a lot of places, so they pay nothing for bandwidth. Peering agreements exist because both parties benefit from the connectivity. I suspect that an ISP that tried to present Google with a bill would be told 'we're not going to pay, we're happy to simply blackhole your network. Have fun explaining to your users why they can't send mail or IMs to gmail users, can't browse YouTube and can't search the web with Google.'

Re:Newspeak

[Culture20]

peering agreement == barter == paying with bandwidth