It's best to go with the flow

Pressure to regulate traffic threatens the neutrality that the net was built on

By Becky Hogge Published 24 April 2008

Bollocks. That was the word the chief exec of Virgin Media chose to describe a debate that has captured the minds of US internet users for the past several years. He was referring to network neutrality: the concept that internet service providers (ISPs) should not be able to discriminate against the data that flows across their networks.

ISPs are under a great deal of pressure. The government wants them to be able to deliver faster broadband connections to UK customers, and this will take major investment from the big players such as BT. Increasing political pressure means they are also suggesting that ISPs should be trying to regulate the content that travels across these networks - stopping their customers from illicitly sharing files, or blocking illegal content such as images of child sex abuse. At the same time ISPs complain that new services, such as the BBC's on-demand iPlayer service, are slowing down the network, while customers grumble that their internet speeds are nothing like those advertised when they signed up.

Over the coming months, these complaints are likely to come to a head. The founding father of the worldwide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has called network neutrality "essential" - for the free market, for democracy and for science. His analysis, that network neutrality is what has driven the internet's rapid pace of innovation, is shared by many others.

From email and eBay to Skype, Facebook and more, applications have mushroomed because all it took to innovate was a computer and a connection. Providers of news services and commercial applications didn't need to factor in strategic players in the distribution network. The wires were dumb: they could not hinder, they could not censor. Network neutrality greatly lowered the cost of innovation, in terms of both structural legwork and risk.

Lord Currie of Marylebone, the chairman of the telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has called the network neutrality debate "confused". Ofcom's take is that, unlike in the US, the UK has a competitive market for internet service provision. This means that if Virgin Media starts charging content providers for fast access to its customers, or slows down the traffic of content providers who refuse to pay, customers who don't like it can move to another provider. And if large providers abuse their market position by throttling innovation on the web, the competition authorities can move in to rectify the situation.

But is this enough? Faced with the choice between cheaper connections, and an open and free internet that comes at a price, will enough UK customers choose to do the decent thing and invest in the internet's future? Or will we be happy to tune in and drop out of iPlayer, YouTube and all the other services big enough to pay the ISPs' levies - and bollocks to the innovators who might have been?

Tags: social media politics digital rights internet

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1 comment

Mon, 2008-04-28 15:26 — denisbork615

Im new to the internet thus ,Im not sure what im reading [the gist seems virgin seeks to want to slow down what the user choses to watch?] unless they pay the isp for a faster service?

That service providers are complaining about certain ''new'' services ,who should be paying the service providers to serve the customers who are now being paid by us needing a service to acces the web [or internet or whatever

Im not even sure we need these isp's , this service they provide gets accessed before i hit the search engine ? [so essentially it is a phone line of some sort ?

[but the phone company supplies the phone line and yahoo or google directs me to the required site ,why cant the isp come with my computer [run through the earth line my computer plugs into]?

im sick of having server errors [one in five searches comes up error 404 [is that my isp?] why cant the omnipotant microsoft set up my new computer into google [or yahoo , automaticlly ,we arnt really getting ;'service'' provided ,and now they want to slow it down more?unless we pay more?

look i bought my first computer [and my kids had to set it [possably it = service provider] for the darn thing to email or give web searches
[i have windows program , and a computer yet i still need to axcess servers that are an added censure between me and the world [ok net][or web]

how is it im now on my third computer [because the other two got so many uploaded bugs in them so they stopped working [my isp must have let them pass right through their service]

even now i cant hear a sound because some bug has blown my sound card to bits [some ser-vice] i can see the you tube vidio's as clear as a bell [but google vidios play for a minute and a half and freeze [thats service?] but no sound. great service

i wish i knew more about these isp's who seem to be able to serve child molesters their porn, but dont let me visit all the searches my search engine finds

[dont start me on the search engines either ]

[searching capacity is definatly being dumbed down
[if im searching for a definative phrase i want that phrase [not all the previous searches for the individual words in the phrase ],

and certainly not that site advert that comes up this site dosnt egsist [do i want to buy it?][or error 404]

the net has become more and more dumbed down in the year i have been on the web, its almost become a joke
[service isnt what we are getting , but seems those willing to pay can highjack my computer at will, and plant 299 bugs in it that some how is able to be found in a test but not fixed .

[i have bought my last computer [the whole thing has become a sick joke ,i want a true [real] service provided by the ''service' provider .

[i want a search when i want a search ,and see a vidio ,[and hear it] and to be able to save stuff [thats about all i need

not this over engeneered pakage provided with my computer [that seemingly can be shut down by the tiniest chinese virus ,
that then still needs a server who isnt really providing me a reliable and safe service
bah

[i wish computers could speak in plain english, where server means service [accountable fast clean, service, on time all the time ,]

[and i certainly dont want to watch high definition [so capacity for the high definition downloads isnt what i want served either [just good oldfashoned 'service']

hoping someone thinks of something better before this computer dies ,thanks to poor service somewhere along the line [web]

[i just want to plug the new one in and tell it what my email is then it does it all and all i have to do is to go to the web and search /download , upload and save ,[thats service]