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British ISPs Embracing Two-Tier Internet

Posted by Soulskill on from the free-speech-as-long-as-money-talks dept.

Barence writes "Britain's leading ISPs are attempting to construct a two-tier internet, where websites and services that are willing to pay are thrust into the 'fast lane,' while those that don't are left fighting for scraps of bandwidth or even blocked outright. Asked directly whether ISP TalkTalk would be willing to cut off access completely to BBC iPlayer in favor of YouTube if the latter was prepared to sign a big enough cheque, TalkTalk's Andrew Heaney replied: 'We'd do a deal, and we'd look at YouTube and we'd look at BBC and we should have freedom to sign whatever deal works.' Britain's biggest ISP, BT, meanwhile says it 'absolutely could see situations in which some content or application providers might want to pay BT for a quality of service above best efforts.' PC Pro asks if it's the end of the net as we know it."

1 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, it is by holophrastic · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    It's the end of the "it's all free all the time to everyone" and it's back to the much more reasonable and sensible "you pay for what you use". Sure it'll expose a demographic that could never pay for anything as one that now won't be able to pay for internet access. Welcome to luxuries and succeeding in what you do. It's not food, it's not healthcare. It's something that easily lived without. And your employer will provide appropriate access to you. And I'll provide appropriate access to my employees -- just like now I provide transportation and mobile phones and computers. And it's not because I'm being nice, it's being commercial-grade things are outside of the reach of my employees, and their consumer-grade carp just isn't good enough.

    And as a result, no providers will be forced to carry crappy customers. And that's called freedom. Freedom for those companies. And that's the point.

    Now you can complain, and you can whine that everybody owns something and you own nothing. And you can start your own company whenever you want to. And odds are that if you're reading this, in your country, you can start a business with $50 and nothing else. And then you'll find out what real work really is. Until then, you'll have no idea.