Slashdot Mirror
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."
IMO, this is about moving money to ISPs who are (in the UK) generally local companies whereas service providers are often foreign owned.
Net neutrality should probably be a WTO issue.
Imagine if Google started shaping outgoing traffic based on incoming address. Boy oh boy, would we hear the gnashing of teeth and angry demands and accusations of monopolistic practices.
Without the content, there would be no reason for consumers to buy Internet service at all.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Your ISP isn't getting paid by Google to allow the pipe your paying for to connect to the pipe they are paying for. That's one of the big evils that Net Neutrality is specifically about preventing.
Personally, I think there should be two categories for ISPs, and it should be up to the individual ISP which one they want to be -- either a common carrier, in which case they are not legally responsible for anything going across their lines but are forbidden from pulling this kind of shit, or a private carrier, in which case they can pull all the BS they want on the lines, but are also ultimately legally responsible for all content on their network. If you pull filtering tricks or the kind of thing in this story, then since you are filtering the content in some form, your customers and those you peer to can assume said content is legal, as you are yb your own inspection process certifying it as such.
Now that every ISP takes the "common carrier -- I don't want sued out of existence because something illegal went across my lines" option, welcome to 'net neutrality. =p
Posting as an AC as I work for some of the parties involved.
The problem is that BT Wholesale wants to bypass the ISP altogether and offer BBC and Google's content directly to the consumer, probably moving to paid content later on.
This is a two tier internet in more sense than one. The "high speed" content does not go through the mandatory Great Firewall of Britain - the anti-paedo system. It also breaks the already completely b0rken British internet model in further and more fantastic ways to a point where near all Broadband vendors will have to have special builds for Britain (or to be more exact BT).