does this mean that they will be throttling video content unless you "upgrade" your conection to allow unfettered access. as opposed to just denying access if you don't pay. Pr doublespeak if you ask me

As always, the average user loses out when believing words such as "unlimited" - there really is no such thing with most if not all of the main broadband providers.

If you do happen to have cable broadband, however, you're a lot better off than we in rural North Yorkshire who have to contend with 'slightly better than dial up' speed levels, and an intermittent broadband supply.

I actually found Australia offered better service to rural locations, where satellite broadband was a viable alternative to our overloaded and working above capacity ADSL lines.

Someone could get vwery rich doing this.

Mr Botnet owner:

Give us £1,000,000 or we redirect 1 million machines to your website and download content. Therefore a) you will suffer DDoS and b) will be clobbered with a huge bill from whatstheirnamethismonth

Mr Website owner. Err paypal Ok?

"...does not intend to hinder access to content providers who do not pay. Rather, VM could offer content providers deals to upgrade their provisioning if they want to ensure best access to to broadband subscribers...."

I'm glad they think they can reverse logic and get away with BS like this. I don't want my ISP 'upgrading' provisioning (thereby downgrading 'the rest') for BS that I don't choose/want/need. Gimme my clean fracking pipe.

Bus lanes are designed to SPEED UP certain traffic (buses) when the rest of the road is congested - and buses have the choice of using any part of the road, unlike the rest of the traffic.

Twit.

How can peering not be Neutral? Thats the point!

Where do VM, Tiscali and the rest get off? They spend ages telling consumers "look, broadband, video on demand, lots of nice stuff" and then when a content provider provides it they try to penalize them.

The point of an ISP is that it provides access to content on the internet. Sorry if that seems a little bit obvious, but maybe someone needs to point it out to VM and co??

Delivering content is what ISPs do. Providing content is what content providers do (hence the name) and they are already paying to deliver that content to the ISP (where they do not have a peering agreement) through transit costs!

The problem is that VM and co have been selling something they haven't got, a network which is man enough to handle what they say all their users can do. That's not the BBC's problem or any other content provider, its the ISP who failed to invest in their infrastructure and priced their product too low to pay for it.

Duh

What they have done recently has been to extend their STM (trotting) window in

Preston, Wigan, Blackpool, Camden, Dalston, Enfield and Haringey, seemingly as a precursor to a national rollout on the cable platform.

10am - 3pm Download only

4pm - 9pm Download

3pm - 8pm Upload

During these times the following thresholds will be applied for upstream and

downstream.

10am - 3pm Download

Size M: 900Mb

Size L: 2400Mb

Size XL: 6000Mb

4pm - 9pm Download

Size M: 450Mb

Size L:1200Mb

Size XL: 3000Mb

3pm - 8pm Upload

Size M: 200Mb

Size L: 700Mb

Size XL: 1400Mb

Speeds will be cut as per http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

choose A or B

A :

giving me 10% off at Boots, access to 100,000 songs you wish you had never heard , a free trouser press, useless AV software ( I USE LINUX FFS ) and a cuddly toy for signing up to a service for ten years which is more throttled than a bloke walking around with comedy horns strapped to his shoes at a funeral, all for £5 a month.

or B

I will pay you a decent amount of money to carry my data on a network that you can keep investing in and make a profit on.

Its a no brainer ISPs, stop listening to your PR and Marketing departments and try to hear your customers for once !

Why alien ? - because I wonder if I'm on the right planet sometimes

Peering is supposed to be a bi-directional model. Peering is about reciprocal relationship between providers to allow them to "exchange" similar amounts of traffic without having to have a directly commercial relationship. Both parties work together and share the cost of the peering - in a perfect world....

However....if the relationship changes to one of a more uni-directional nature, then the commercials are looked at again, and often this is re-negotiated back to a transit/DIA type of link.

I'm not personally aware of the type of relationship that the BBC and VM have between each other, but if it is a true peering relationship and the traffic patterns are now no longer that of a peering type of relationship, then why does VM not just negotiate them back to a paid link...

It's gets done all the time by the major ISP's, I know I have worked for 2 of the largest in the world :)

True VM can't really cut them off, as then VM would have to pay more to Level 3 for transit.

What we need is a different type of peering point for media traffic, where we establish different commercial models for this type of traffic.

I thought the idea of an ISP was to provide a service that the customer paid for. It appears that I was wrong. I use a land-line and I pay a rental. In addition I pay for the calls I make. The same applies to gas, electricity etc. Where's the problem? I think the ISP's need to get themselves sorted out. Like *rapid*.

So

Virgin, not satisfied with trying to insert their Phorm with out even the decency to grease me up with KY first are up to new tricks?

Now it seem they don't like Net Neutrality!!! FFS

What don't they get, BROADBAND is a utility, Virgin are a Utility provider, they get to set a pricing model like other Utility providers do either by meter, prepay or flat rate. What they DON'T get to decide is what they will provide depending on who on the back end pays for it. Pipe open or pipe closed, simple! Not pipe open for for this but closed for that or pipe wider for this but narrower for that.

On or Off that's how broadband should work, you pay for a given pipe width and that's what you should get with no restrictions and the only thing Virgin should have a say in its the pricing model, just like a utility company.

My water costs X flat rate or Y per unit on a meter, thats fair, them telling me which brand of shower i can use with my water isn't. Same goes for electricity, gas and BROADBAND.

For a company in tonnes of debt, Virgin do seem to love the idea of upsetting their customers and forcing them to rivals. What Virgin doesn't realise is that when we leave on broadband we also leave on TV, phone and mobile to and when we leave on mobile we often take our family to which means they leave on TV and broadband too.

I tell the one more piece of crap like this and Virgin will be loosing a few package customers as i will be off!

Wankers!

The UK cable industry got limited regional monopolies and hefty tax credits to encourage them to roll a cable infrastructure. Now that has turned into a complete monopoly isn't it time to apply to Virgin Media the terms we applied to BT. Force them to sell wholesale bandwidth and provide access by 3rd parties to their cable infrastructure.

Then we can get on with the business of offering limited monopolies and hefty tax credits to people who want to build out fibre to the home.

"Bus lanes are designed to SPEED UP certain traffic (buses) when the rest of the road is congested - and buses have the choice of using any part of the road, unlike the rest of the traffic."

Yes, and the loss of a lane just happens to SLOW DOWN the rest of the traffic.

In the same way that for an ISP with a certain bandwidth (much like a road with a fixed width) faster access for some == slower access for everyone else.

Why does this fucking idiot Neil Burkett still have a job?

Virgin shareholders should call for his resignation because even if VM says that didn't mean what he said he meant and thus he is a lier or has multiple personalities, then he has at least cost them big money as current and future subscribers consider his statements when they choose their broadband.

> Yet it seems increasingly clear that someone's going to pay the price for the UK's lack of investment in a modern internet infrastructure

Not strictly true...the infrastructure does need updating in the future of course - this is an international requirement [and thus far completely ignored by the registers "bbc v small time ISP" spat]

But the more immediate problem of BT resellers and users using their service seems no different to the time when internet punters paid a tenner a month but had to pay metered access phone calls. This cost a fortune...but the solution was broadband [the non-solutions were 0800 redhotant and the various isps with "free" in the name, NTL's silly CD offer and so on...who paid for those? The businesses did by failing miserably. These were all early demonstrations of the indisputable fact that the ISP business is populated by clueless f**ktards who couldn't run a bath]

Firstly, clearly ISPs make a ton of money from the hosting sites. [cf: what youtube pay their isp]

Secondly clearly someone is making a ton of money if tiscali et al are passing the onion about have to pay said someone a ton of money.

Both of which shows you where the money for the upgrades is.

In the meantime, small time badly managed UK ISPs need to do what internet punters had to do...Start campaigning for "unmetered" bandwidth for themselves themselves - or at least better deals....who will pay? They will if they don't get them.

Where we went wrong, of course, in terms of infrastructure was years before all of this when Thatcher et al sold BT at a huge, huge loss [1.25 a share or something ridiculous like that] and then letting BT piss billions and billions up the wall [as the share price rose and rose] to the point where BT shares were worth less than they started at.

They had to do something back then of course...back then we paid a fortune for phone calls...now we pay less....who pays for it? Simple, it just doesn't cost as much now....it's just a gravy train that'll crash, that's who pays...unless you're a mug of course.

Just to correct you. Virgin do not offer IPTV.

Hmmmm

Interesting how only the BBC is being picked on here, what about ITV, Channel 4 & 5 and Sky Anytime? they both all use network bandwidth...dont they???!!!

People who read this website and those that comment want clean pipes and are willing to pay extra for it.

You are a minority.

The vast majority of the population want broadband as cheap as possible, think contention is a TV game show and wireless networking is witchcraft.

You come on here shouting as if you speak for the people but unfortunately from your educated IT position you show real ignorance of the general populations wishes.

Don't come on here shouting about paying extra for clean pipes because, "it's what customers want". They don't. As an example look at the number of customers sky, CW and Orange have because they claim to be giving it away.

Any ISP that charges the true rate for an uncontended broadband service will go bust within a month as the churn rate hits 99.9%.

You want clean fast fat pipes. Go rent a leased line. BT do a fantastic offer of 2Mbps costing around £400 a month if you haggle.

You want it go pay for it.

What you say is true at the moment - most people are happy enough if they can browse the web, watch a bit of youtube etc and don't need the high speed connection that the average reader (myself included) are clamouring for.

However, as habits change and everyone starts wanting to watch tv over the internet and all the other wonderous things that are promised us, we're all going to be a bit f*cked as no one is investing any money now when they really need to be.

Paris, because she enjoys a bit of pipe cleaning....

ISPs are there to provide us with internet access.

We pay them for this service.

That money is then used to invest in fibre so we can all get decent access speeds.

But not anymore, ISPs are all about providing more services for less money.

Get back to your core business!!!

Actually BT has a totally unlimited product, I'm on it. Was downloading over P2P at just over 800KBps earlier, in fact in the past two hours I've downloaded just under 3.5 Gig

I assume your from an ISP.

I think the majority of people would demand a decent service if they realised they weren't getting one. Your right, the majority of people do not understand the issues and can be missold a product.

The issues as we see them are that you are selling a product, and failing to deliver it. When your "broadband" services are in reality comparable in performance to a 56k modem claiming that the service is "up to" 8MB is immoral at best, and fraudulent at worst.

Your statement that any ISP changing all its products to an uncontended service would go out of business is probably quite true.

However, that wasn't the issue. People want the service that they were sold, ie an "unlimited" internet connection with a speed of "up to 8MB". If you work in service I am sure that you appreciate that managing expectations is a fundamental part of any service relationship, and some ISP's are failing to properly manage this expectation by making promises that they can't meet.

ISP's such as Eclipse and Entanet seem to have no trouble maintaining contended networks for a reasonable price. I see no reason why other ISP's can not be capable of this. True, charging for a reasonable product does cost more and prices you out of the ultra low end of the market. However, I think its questionable whether its worth competing for those customers if you are not making much out of them, and creating a possible liability for your company.

When talking about VM we are talking about ntl ($18bn debt - Biggest Corporate default in history) and Telewest ($5bn debt) brought under the VM umbrella.

In essence, what I'm saying is that there's a limited pot, and the VM wallet has only been open for just over a year, so what's this i hear about infrastructure investment? Go after Messars Huff, Malone, Blumenthal and Knapp and ask them. Sure they brought all the companies together, but they made sure they were ok at the end of it.

Ms Hilton, as she's as minted as an ex telco CEO...

"Simple, don't pay for a TV licence and put £12pm towards getting a business class connection without limits."

Interesting thought. Does this mean that we'll now have to supply our address details when buying routers (as is currently the case when buying TVs etc..) so that the TV licencing people can check up on us as we could be watching TV over the internet?

If the electricity companies tried a similar approach?

You buy a two bar heater and the electricity company start to complain that you are using too much electricity (even though you pay for it).

I guess that the ISPs are victims of their own ingenious marketing practices. Years ago peoples internet traffic used to be metered by virtue of the use of the telephone.

Perhaps if the ISP's tried to move more back to a metered model like the utilities (which is effectively what they are) whereby you pay for usage rather than a flat fee. That way I wouldn't be subsidising freetards and the infastructure could be as fast as it needed to be.

Or maybe thats bolloks and expecting a company to deliver what they sell you is too much to expect.

</rambling rant>

imagine if you bought a pint/litre of milk and when you got it home there where notes akin to:

in small print, the purchase of a pint/litre of milk does not ensure that you received a full liquid measure, but rather what we could be bothered to squeeze out of the cow! before gouging your wallet.

or

the remaing half pint will be delviered to you at a time and date suitable to the cow

or

you have bought economy mile, to ensure that the full amount of milk you purchased is delviered please upgrade to a premium pint of milk.

or,

oh, you want to drink you milk at breakfast - thats prime time miling drink and therefore you will be capped to one weetabix worth of milk, please eat the remainig cereals at night after yuo have gone to bed and before you wake up!

or to ensure you get a full pint of milk, use your local milkman - and screw the supermarket.

better still - get your own cow

...why the service offered since the VM rebranding is also bollocks?

With the new even more draconian STM limits in trial (nicely listed by someone earlier), the standard of service offered by VM is going downhill on a weekly basis.

They can now only provide around 25->50 percent of the bandwidth they have already sold, and it's getting worse.

Frankly I'd be happy to lose a months subscription to watch them go bang and be forced to sell up, it's looking like the only way the customers stand any chance of getting what they paid for.

If broadband really is the jewel in VM's crown then god help them, because what you get bears no relation to the advertising and the reality of what you get!

This stuff makes me laugh. We pay already for broadband(width) connections. throttling them down makes them no-so-broadband(width). If your electricity company gave you 240volts if you buy the electric units from british gas, but only 110v if you but them from powergen, im sure we would all be going WTF why did my hairdryer blow up?

Instead of rolling out a 50mbps connection for those with enough money. Why don't they cap everybody at 10mbps untill the overall network can cope with more. I remember upgrading from 56Korpse to 0.5mbps cable, it was great... then I got a free upgrade to 1mbps, brilliant... then 2mbps, fantastic... after than I never really noticed the difference... I just wish they would tell the truth, like the good old days.

The Pirates flag, because thats what ISP's have turned into.

Guys, I kind of disagree with you - it looks like this is really dependent on where you are. For example, I'm on the outskirts of a town and my VM service is pretty good. For example, I managed to download a DVD-size ISO of an OS in a little under an hour the other day. And if I do my downloads 7.30-midday then I'm regularly seeing download speeds of 1000-1200KB/s, which given that I'm on the "L" package is excellent, (reliability is pretty sparkling too). And kudos for a "free" upgrade from my 4Mb/s connection. :)

Where I'm really peeved though, is in the traffic management. Try downloading a couple of Debian/Ubuntu updates (small) between 15.30 and 20.00 (yes, I'm a *nix geek) and you'll normally get 80-140KB/s - even if your previous use in the day has been very low/none. So much for this "we'll go after the bandwidth hogs"... >-(

I also very much agree with the folks that are saying that they want a bit of "Internet string" and NOTHING ELSE. Like them, I've no interest in "value added content". Take the money spent (sorry wasted) and use it to upgrade the backbone says I. Especially VM - two years ago (imho) you had good infrastructure - it's maybe long overdue to upgrade it.

I'd love to tell VM to get raffled (especially about the TV STB's - useless digital embarrassment that they are!!) but (a) there's no-one doing a broadband service even comparable in my area (Thank BT - not!); and (b) are the alternative providers any better, (e.g. Sky for the TV), I don't think so. The only advantage to the others is that at least their management seem to be doing SOMETHING!

(Paris icon because I'm sure Ms H could do a better job by herself than VM's entire "board" [good name for it because imho they're a bunch of 2x4's])

yeah right,,,, and i'm the Pope

im on the 10MB package that got upgraded to 20MB, funny, ive never seen anything over 4MB(and that was well before xmass) currently on something between a wet peice of string and 1.5Mps for direct download. with web speeds aproaching the blindingly fast speeds that ISDN could supply at 64Kbps.

no joking

if i can get torrents to work they are never more than 200kbps and less than 3kpbs during the evenings, even web TV or Radio are stuffed 24/7.

but thats ok, as i havnt paid a penny for the service(hahahahahaha if you can call it that) since they lost my subscription application (twice) in 2006. i mean i even setup a new bank account, which has an accrueing amount of money in it,(i sub-let bandwidth(whats half of 0 again);p to other tennants in the shared property i'm in) that i may as use as my private pension for my retirement, as im sure it will be untouched by them b4 then, going on the quality of thier accounts dept so far.

mines the one with 'YARR!' written on it that the NTL man gave me when he quit...