Virgin to throttle net for it's users

Virgin Media's CEO Neil Berkett has effectively announced plans to throttle its users' access to any internet sites who don't effectively 'pay up'.

This is basically trying to abolish the the principle of 'net neutrality' - that everyone, everywhere, can access the same things equally. Its something we take for granted everyday while browsing and using any part of the Internet for one flat cost from your ISP.

Virgin is planning to throttle the available bandwidth of websites who don't pay up to it's users - As a site, if you don't pay, Virgin Media users will only be able to view your site at say dialup speeds.
The easiest analogy for this action would be for the open Internet to turn into something more of a TV channel.

Its easy to see how this could irreversibly damage services such as streaming video [youtube for example], which require a high bandwidth to provide their service. That is, if Virgin don't get their cut of profits.

For all of us who aren't in Britain or have Virgin as their ISP, why does this matter? Because if something isn't done, it could be the beginning of the end. The scheme would provide a huge new source of profit for Virgin, and any ISP with a brain could be considering following the same course of action, if it isn't contested.

The eventual worst case scenario would be for internet users around the world paying premium's for custom content - an extra $5 per month for blogs and social networking sites, $20 for most video stream sites, etc.
The next worst is the internet being shallowed into a torrent of only mainstream sites, the only ones able to pay ISPs to have full access to their users.

http://stopvirgin.movielol.org/

http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/3845

This does sound ham-handed. And anything this crude should be stopped.

But, this is a complex issue, even if you focus just on the technical side -- and ignore the whole copyright/IP bag-o-worms.

Most commercial sites spend more on bandwidth costs than they do for hardware and co-lo space. This means that bandwidth has a real cost, its not free. But most ISPs pretend that it is, they implicitly sell "all you can eat" for a low price. If you drive a decent 5 mbs cable modem or other broadband link at its max for hours on end, you are breaking all of the traffic engineering assumptions that were used to build the network.

Someone has to pay for all that bandwidth.

The broadband link to my house is fast, but 99% of the time, its idle. I like the snappy response when I want to watch the latest Techzilla feed. I sure don't want to pay for my link at even 95% usage pricing.

It does sound hamhanded. Given that this is the OP's second post on the matter, with no prior history to speak of, it also sounds very suspicious. Where the hell did I leave my wiffle bat. Oh, there it is.

How do you mean 2nd?

Despite half of my post leaning a tad too much towards sensationalism, I'd have to say we all like the principle of net neutrality staying alive?

Because the crux of the matter is that the CEO of a major ISP disagrees, and the most dangerous part is that others might turn to follow him.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080413.WBmingram20080413150531/WBStory/WBmingram
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/13/1913241&from=rss

Don't worry about sizablegrin, he's just an old coot on the down-hill side.

Actually, I have no clue what "net neutrality" means. It seems to be a big political battle between some groups of people that I can't follow.

I can't follow it, the rhetoric is too think. It seems like:
The "pro" net neutrality folks seem to be to be singing an obsolete socialistic song, and the ""anti" seem to be huge media and telco companies. In general, while I am a pure market guy, hating Telcos and AOL does have a certain appeal.

If anyone can explain, in unbiased terms, what this all means, I'm be most thankful.

A basic concept of markets is that if you buy more apples, you have to pay more than someone who only wants a few apples. If you want better apples, you pay more. And the merchants with the best location for their stalls, pay more and get more business.

in a one liner, net neutrality means unrestricted access to anything on the internet. Sort of Internet free speech if you will. 3rd parties (ISPs, governent, ....) shouldn't keep you from accessing any online resources that you might want to see.

If I was a Virgin subscriber, I'd drop 'em, actually it'd probably make me reconsider setting up as a local ISP

Thanks for the link Artie.



Er, not so fast, the Wikipedia article is long and has many pro and con statements from many people.

Its not clear if we are talking about the bandwidth vendors being common carriers or if it just means that the vendors want to get paid for what they deliver.

I don't see any "free speech" issue here, I do see a 'free beer' issue, someone has to pay for the engineering of the network.

It would be nice if there were high bandwidth media that were free of the copyright/IP issues. Since a lot of the p2p traffic is bootlegging movies and music, its hard to get much sympathy for that argument.

It can be either free speech or free beer. For example, in china, certain websites are not accessible because the government blocks them out.

When it comes to stuff like accessing illegal software or P2P, I agree it gets a little more complex. but it's apart of the debate.