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Virgin Media CEO Says Net Neutrality Is Already Gone
Journal written by Presto Vivace (882157) and posted by
kdawson
on Sun Apr 13, 2008 05:13 PM
from the it's-not-your-internet-sonny dept.
from the it's-not-your-internet-sonny dept.
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.'"
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Your Rights Online: BPI Defends Anti-File-Sharing Partnership With Virgin Media 98 comments
MrSteveSD writes "The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has responded to criticism by Bill Thomson over its collusion with Virgin Media in targeting UK file sharers. BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor personally wrote to the BBC to set things straight, and he asserts that 'it's Mr Thompson, rather than music companies, who is stuck in the past.' Of course, Virgin Media customers who download music and TV legally often find their connections being turned down to unusable speeds due to Virgin's aggressive throttling policy."
Mike also points out a blog entry that describes one of the letters received by a Virgin Media customer. In the letter were suggestions regarding the customer's router settings and anti-virus software.
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That sound you hear... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:4, Informative)
Digital Spy forums [digitalspy.co.uk] have in-depth discussions about Virgins financial status. In particular "Virgin Media TV channels have posted a loss for the past two quarters." [digitalspy.co.uk]
Not surprisingly, Virgin are in the process of increasing their service fees (a +1 pound/month surcharge for paper bills), and an increase for daytime telephone calls, (from 3.25 pence/minute to 4.00 pence/minute) for anyone doesn't have an XL service.
Trying to extract some revenue from their content producers seems to be the next moneymaking scheme.
Parent
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course - the only other alternative for digital TV would be freeview (limited channels) or Rupert Murdoch's Sky.
However, if enough people got wind of this, it would be possible to give Virgin a bit of a kicking financially.
Parent
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:4, Insightful)
We need to stop ranting and instead start discussing ways to protect freedom of information and privacy. ISP's have a very real problem in that bandwidth is not free and a small percentage of users do in fact use the majority of bandwidth. The real problem is more about truth in advertising. We share bandwidth and the routers can only handle so much traffic.
Parent
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have 24Mbps service from bethere.co.uk
Sure, it suffers from real speeds bein anywhere from 13 to 20, but that's still a good chunk.
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
You will regret that. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You say this like it is impossible. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
FalconParent
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:4, Insightful)
1/ This isn't in the US.
2/ (In the US, at least) These companies tend to have government-granted monopoly status, where you're not allowed to compete with them. This is why US broadband sucks so much.
Parent
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:That sound you hear... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Its the wrong term of reference (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Its the wrong term of reference (Score:5, Interesting)
Make no mistake, what this guy is talking about makes me very angry.
Parent
This coming from Virgin...! (Score:3, Interesting)
Napoleon used to say: "I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets."
I hesitate between thanking this guy to state openly what the other ISP's have worked hard to disguise and warning him to watch the speed at which his brand will disintegrate...
Because, indeed, as the parent implies, Virgin's scheme means the end of the Internet as we know it, and we are r
Meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bus Lane? (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Bus lane analogy (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't the whole point of bus lanes to keep the buses moving in rush hour traffic? Not the best analogy for a Virgin wannabe-mobster to be using to coerce content providers to cough up.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Virgin? (Score:5, Funny)
"You wanna do it without a condom? It'll cost you..."
Checklist for Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
Finally, some honesty. (Score:5, Informative)
A Translation, Me Hearties- (Score:4, Interesting)
If so, I vote we prosecute him for downloading child porn, as a modern-day equivalent of walking the plank, and a warning to the other ISPs...
Yarrrrr!
Re:A Translation, Me Hearties- (Score:4, Informative)
I think it's some Slashdotters that are perpetrating the myth that "common carrier protections" exist for data providers. As far as I know, that's not true, that it's only for voice, as in POTS.
Parent
Refreshing (Score:3, Interesting)
It happens that I believe that all should have equal access but then I do not run an ISP. It seems clear that multiple levels of service can be commanded by varying levels of payments. Sort of like steak or hamburger.
It will be interesting to see how all of this finally works out.
So Virgin Is the Enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:grow up (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:So Virgin Is the Enemy (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't hurt to underestimate the public's attention span and insight into its self-interest, because it's usually absent, especially in the face of distracting entertainment. Unless by underestimating you ignore when it's available as a powerful ally. In Net Neutrality, this has somehow turned out to be the case. Let's not pass it up.
Parent
Billing your competitor's customers (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Billing your competitor's customers (Score:4, Insightful)
This significantly distorts the market, since example.com can't just go elsewhere to access these customers. If CableCo is the only way to reach them, it basically has to pony up whatever CableCo asks for, or just give up that section of its customer base. And ultimately it's CableCo's customers who wind up paying for it, since--- to stay in business--- example.com will just past the additional costs along to its customers (e.g., the cost of premium services gets boosted so that CableCo can make its competition-free profit.)
If you were to consider an alternative model where CableCo offers tiered services, but the end-customer foots the bill for using these resources, you'd have a much healthier situation. If CableCo charges too much, then there's pressure on it (via regulation or competition) to lower its prices. In either case, the customer has an accurate perception of how much their ISP is charging them, and they're not subject to all of the hidden charges.
Which is, of course, exactly why companies like CableCo want to do things this way. It's much better to extract a rent from your customers without their knowing it.
Parent
The wrong way round (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming (since I am not an expert on this) that the prioritisation of content is being done by some sort of prioritising of packets then it is a mutually exclusive situation. The line is only so fast - the line contains only so much bandwidth. If all providers pay to have their content prioritised then nothing moves any "faster" than it is with neutrality. If only one pays to have their content "faster" then all they are doing is degrading all other traffic.
ISP provisions need to be revolutionised - the current crop are perfectly happy as a hegemony of providers - do what they like, charge what they like. There is "competition" in only a very superficial sense.
Virgin's shaping - poorly executed (Score:4, Informative)
We noticed slowdowns / issues but didn't call Virgin until my wife determined these always happened after 4PM. This was after some three weeks of slowdowns.
Called Virgin's "pay as you go support", where a technician cheerfully told us we'd been capped due to a violation of AUP.
Ok. Someone had leached our connection. Our fault. But it took TWO weeks to get uncapped.
All this after several weeks of leaching - which impacted ALL customers on our local net mind you - no email, no call, nothing. Until we incurred expense calling their "pay as you go support".
Virgin's shaping is poorly executed, and heavy handed.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
counter attack (Score:5, Interesting)
Time for the Government to Take Over? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a bonus for the security-minded, if the government operated the public network, they wouldn't have to go cap-in-hand to the private sector for permission to monitor traffic. There are cameras on all the major highway intersections, and no one complains. The same could be done for a data network.
Governments aren't as cost-effective as private enterprise, but they have the terrific advantage of operating more in the public eye. For a public resource, this is an extremely valuable characteristic.
The fact is, telecom doesn't operate in a free market, so almost none of the normal arguments for letting private enterprise take the lead are valid. Competition doesn't truly exist, so corporations are free to invent ever more resourceful ways to make us pay more for less.
At the very least, a publicly-run network would be more responsive to ordinary users who at least have a vote. As it stands now, we really are at the telecomm's mercy.
Virgin Media is "a load of bollocks" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To answer your question, this guy is talking about charging content providers for faster throughput. Which implicitly is saying that they're going to slow down service for the majority of sites that don't pay the toll.
So while I am sure your $10 is appreciated, it's not going to help with this kind of tiered pricing.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is Hilarious (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What if Google stopped responding to requests from Virgin customers? I think Virgin would cave in pretty quickly.
Isn't this more or less the same thing that we're fighting against? And the same thing that Microsoft did to Dr DOS?
In all seriousness though, I would love to see Google sneak in a special version of their adwords. Every time a Virgin ISP user is served a Google ad, make sure one says:
Attention Virgin Media Customer
Your ISP is slowing your connection down to extort money out of you! Click here for more information!
Re:Isn't it the other way around? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent