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.'"

That sound you hear...

...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...

Just FYI - whilst Virgin have the cable market in the UK sewn up, we're lucky enough to not have a situation whereby ISPs are limited to any particular area.

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.

Re:That sound you hear...

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.

Re:That sound you hear...

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...

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...

Well, it makes it considerably better. It seems far more nefarious to be perpetrating these acts against paying customers in secrecy, than doing it in the open. You know exactly what you're paying for, when it comes to this guy...

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

Re:That sound you hear...

And your trite quote doesn't alter the fact that I prefer openness and honesty over secrecy.

An honest crook is still a crook.

You say this like it is impossible.

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.

Falcon

Its the wrong term of reference

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

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.

Meanwhile...

An anguished, collective shout of horror and surprise emanates from Virgin Media's PR department: "Nooooooooooo!!!"

Bus Lane?

"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!

Bus lane analogy

If you aren't prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane'.

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.

Virgin?

I doubt it.

"You wanna do it without a condom? It'll cost you..."

Checklist for Slashdot

Ok, summary and title have virgin, internet, balls (bollocks), and media in it. Alright, all we need is MS, conspiracy and goatse before we have and uberstory.

Finally, some honesty.

Finally a company is honest enough to admit that net neutrality doesn't exist. Here in Canada, almost every ISP is throttling torrents, throttling DSL 'nodes', circumventing advertisements for their own, prioritizing certain web pages, and worse. This is rarely publicized until some intelligent people discover it and bring it to light and since there's no rules or laws, it's perfectly acceptable by everyone but the consumer.

A Translation, Me Hearties-

Virgin Media CEO Says Net Neutrality is "A Load of Bollocks"

"The best we can do with p2p is try to slow it down."

...he's already doing deals to deliver some people's content faster than others...

IANAL, so does anybody know if these kinds of deals might have the effect of invalidating an ISP's 'common carrier' protections?

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!

So Virgin Is the Enemy

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.

Re:grow up

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.

Billing your competitor's customers

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.

The wrong way round

he's already doing deals to deliver some people's content faster

Typical bit of marketing here - this shouldn't be allowed to stand. Deals aren't being done to deliver content "faster" - deals are being done to deliver other content slower. Bandwidth is a zero-sum equation.

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.

counter attack

If I was some content provider like a youtube knock off or something and I got some bullshit shakedown letter asking for money or they'll limit the download speed at my site, I'd note the ISP sending it and put a blatent note on every video playing page that said "If _____ is your ISP, they're purposely slowing down video streaming on this site. To view videos at full speed, switch to another ISP." That would really burn their ass. You get enough of those messages around the internet on high traffic sites and everyone will get a really bad image of that ISP really fast and switch like crazy. That would be the end of that crap and it would force net nuetrality faster than any law would.

Re:Unfortunately...

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

Re:This is Hilarious

I'm pleased overall with my Entanet DSL. All the resellers seem to offer the same price packages, so I use UKFSN [ukfsn.org] (no association with them other than as a customer) who use all of their profits to fund UK free software projects. The business packages are reasonably priced and seem to be the closest thing you can get to a direct, neutral, non 'managed' connection these days. They also offer genuine unlimited packages, although the prices might be a bit of a shock to people used to the so-called unlimited offerings from other ISPs.

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.

Re:Isn't it the other way around?

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.