Virgin's CEO suggests those not willing to pay Virgin an extra fee
for speed would end up in the "bus lanes" of broadband delivery.Virgin Media has gone old-school when it comes to network neutrality. The United
Kingdom's second-largest broadband provider,
with 3.5 million customers, said it wants to charge content providers different
rates to deliver prioritized data, voice and video.
In an interview in the Royal Television Society's Television magazine,
Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett warned that
those not willing to pay Virgin an extra fee for speed would end up in the
"bus lanes" of broadband delivery. Berkett called the principle of network
neutralityall content being delivered equally to all users"a load of
bollocks."
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Like all broadband providers, Virgin is facing the challenge of delivering
growing volumes of video to users, using up huge chunks of broadband in the
process. Berkett said Virgin is considering a fee-based system for content
providers wishing to have their traffic moved faster than others.
While Berkett's comments were in relation to the BBC and its iPlayer online
video player, the plan could also include peer-to-peer traffic and video
sharing sites like YouTube. According to the BBC, users watch 600,000 shows per
day with more than 42 million shows viewed online already in 2008.
The BBC's iPlayer traffic is surging along, jumping by 25 percent per month.
Adding to the traffic is the recent availability of the player on Apple's
iPhone and Nintendo's Wii game console.
Can the FCC enforce network neutrality rules? Comcast says no. Click here to read more.
"The BBC does pay to create, encode, host and distribute its programs
into the broadband network, but we should not have to subsidize the ISPs'
infrastructure upgrades," Ashley Highfield, the BBC's former director of
future media and technology, said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
Highfield added, "I don't think any content providers should pay ISPs
to deliver their content: Users would, I strongly believe, react very
negatively to a situation in which certain video content was throttled or
downgraded or even not made available because that content provider had not
paid a levy to a particular ISP."
Before Virgin could actually launch the plan, it would have to seek approval
from Ofcom (Office of Communications), the British regulatory equivalent to the
U.S. FCC (Federal Communications Commission).
In the United States,
the network neutrality debate has moved to a discussion of ISP network
management. The FCC is currently investigating complaints against Comcast for
"throttling" network traffic from applications using BitTorrent.
Comcast admits to the practice but contends that it falls under the
"reasonable network management" allowed by the FCC.
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