Arts Technica – August 13, 2007:
While the network neutrality debate can sometimes feel a bit theoretical in the US, it’s a live issue in Europe, and this week it hit the pages of newspapers across the UK. What made news was a set of demands by UK ISPs, which banded together to tell the BBC that the ISPs would start to throttle the Corporation’s new iPlayer service because it could overwhelm their networks. Unless the BBC pays up, of course.
Tiscali appears to be leading the charge, though ISPs like BT and Carphone Warehouse are also said to be involved. Tiscali UK CEO Mary Turner told the Financial Times, “The Internet was not set up with a view to distributing video. We have been improving our capacity, but the bandwidth we have is not infinite. If the iPlayer really takes off, consumers accessing the Internet will get very slow service and call their ISPs to complain.”
The answer, from the ISP perspective, is to start throttling bandwidth used to download content to the iPlayer “catch-up” service.
Headline Typo BBC Not BCC.
Cheap bastards.
The Internet was not set up with a view to distributing video
What!? Welcome to the 2000s, internet video has be around for a LONG time. This isn’t about diminishing bandwidth (although ISPs really don’t want to improve their infrastructure), its about going after a large company for money they think they can get out of them. If the ISPs are so worried about bandwidth, why aren’t they going after google (youtube)? Why aren’t they going after small sites that base their content on video?
This is a cash grab and its BS.
Will these religious nuts never stop? First they’ll throttle bandwidth. Next thing you know, math and science text books will be replaced in Bibles all across America. Impeach Bush Now!
Sounds like we need a new internet.. one designed to ‘distribute video’
#5 – It’s called television…
Nice little video player you have here, it’d be terrible if something were to happen to your bandwidth….
-Guido
J/P=?
As a Brit, ISP’s in the UK, what can I say? I have heard that Alaska’s great Senator and impressario Ted Stevens maybe consulting for them on this case. The internet is a series of tubes remember, not a truck or a method for delivering video content.
This internet thing, like mobile phones, will never catch on. They are all overated.
😉
Kudos to them. The BBC already takes money if you own a TV.
This has NOTHING , repeat NOTHING to do with Broadband usage what so ever!
Tiscali have a rival product called Home Choice to provide TV channels to its customers via broadband. BT have their OWN rival product called BT Vision. This is merely a way to try and stop competition and my guess is, it’s going to get slammed.
The throttling is ALREADY in effect. Most, if not all UK ISPs use traffic shaping (Ellacoya, etc) to priortise traffic on their networks. I just love the way ISPs sell us this great “broadband” experience and the moment we use it, they bleat on about how their networks weren’t designed to cope!
After the BBC, they can extort money from Blizzard, Sony, and Microsoft to pay for all of the bandwidth online gamers are using. 🙂
Oh yeah, and all of those companies that charge monthly fees for Usenet downloads… some of -that- moolah should be helping to pay for “infrastructure”.
Ah, the commie’s are at it again…
As someone who actually has run a physical network, bandwidth and latency cost money.
For net neutrality to truly work, the end user has to decide what kind of speed and latency they desire, and then pay appropriately for it. I have no idea what appropriate is, but charging people a constant ‘X’ amount per month regardless of what they want/need/use, is rediculous.
This is about fairness, to both the end user and ISP. The ISP’s are trying to thrive/survive in this changing world, and nobody is served is people aren’t allowed to make a reasonable/decent profit on their investment.
13 For net neutrality to truly work, the end user has to decide what kind of speed and latency they desire, and then pay appropriately for it.
I thought that was what we were doing.
Comcast offers me speeds “up to” X-Mbps, for Y-USD/month.
They also offer a faster down/up speed, for a higher monthly fee.
Why do they then need to “throttle” any site I chose to visit, since they are already throttling it down to whatever level of service I am paying for?
Are they like the airlines, over-booking their capacity?
Are they like the early AOL, that had to change its terms of service to reflect that you were not to be connected 24-hours-a-day?
13 The ISP’s are trying to thrive/survive in this changing world, and nobody is served is people aren’t allowed to make a reasonable/decent profit on their investment.
I disagree. I see them realizing “this changing world” is relegating their networks to commodity status – and they want a piece of the action from the companies whose products are not commodities – yet.
Isn’t it so that when video enters the network it takes over the bandwith slowing your website access and file downloading. At least that’s what UDP protocol does to TCP. I was living in a highrise building with VideoIP and web pages stopped completing and downloads almost stopped when people started watching movies at 8PM. ISP finally quit offering the service.
The BBC iPlayer uses peer to peer file sharing technology to distribute the video content. Fine – it gets you your video “faster” but I don’t think that most of the people using the software realise that this means that their broadband useage is getting increasingly higher and higher. A lot of people in the UK have broadband, but not unlimited broadband, and get charged when they go over a not too large limit. When the people start paying for the service through these data useage bills that they were not expecting, they will stop using the service so much.
I got two words for them, upgrade and fibre.
Dammit
M