UK.gov ignores 'net neutrality' campaigners ISPs will be allowed to charge content providers to prioritise their traffic, the government indicated today. A speech by the communications minister Ed Vaizey confirmed that the concept of "net neutrality" remains irrelevant in the UK under the coalition. As long as providers are open about their policies, he said, the …
Yep, because now individuality comes at a premium.
This is cultural collectivism, an almost communist nightmare.
- Fit in with the X-Factor loving herd, and your tastes will be catered to efficiently.
- Let them tell you what to watch, download, buy, and you're a -good- consumer and will get great service.
- Fall out the collectivists target market, and you can whistle, whilst still paying through the nose to subsidise the more obedient customers!
A possible solution:
- force ISP's to charge by the megabyte
results:
- ISP's deliver the data the consumer -wants-, targeting latency to increase turnover
- Corporations can still pay ISPs to cache their data
- Customers not conforming will still represent a business case for ISPs to develop generic internet infrastructure
Any takers?
>>"as to being able to move, since the phorm fiasco most ISP's now try and lock customers into 18 and 24 month contracts with big early release payments so they can't afford to change provider."
Doesn't seem like there's been a huge change in the last couple of years, and many of the long contracts may well be parts of bundles.
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2010/10/11/broadband-internet-consumers-still-preferring-shorter-isp-contracts.html
Not sure why even if there was an increase it would be anything to do with Phorm, since however shitty and/or illegal the business may have been, out of the total number of people online, there can't be too many people who heard about it and got bothered enough to remember.
So next time a politician wants to take some kind of credit for the web based creative industries that we keep hearing are the saviour of small business in the UK is it fair to assume that some other politician is thinking "a successful small business, in the UK, we can't have that going on... wont someone think of the child".
Liars, cheats and thieves.
I think we're ( I'm ) close to the point where the internet just aint worth it. The wickie wickie wild wild west that was the internet is slowly being eroded by .gov.uk and the entertainment moguls. How long before that TOR connection flags us as terrorists/peados? Or SSL's having to be approved by .gov.uk? Seems that the internet is the last bastion of free speach and they are trying their damnest to put a cork in that.
Fuck em if they cant take a joke
Mines the one with C.R.A.S.S. on the label
Im sure the ISP's sold this to ministers in a nice abstracted fashion that somehow made it look like they were acting in the best interest of their customers. But surely even a technical dunce can see that the only alternative to "best effort across the board" is "slow down everything we aren't getting paid twice to transport" and adds another layer of excuses between poor performance for the end user and lack of investment in network infrastructure,
"You can't stream HD because google is too cheap to pay for prioritized bandwidth, it's got absolutely nothing to do with chronic oversubscription"
Is a society where the people tasked with making policy have some basic technical understanding of the areas for which they are responsible really a dream too far?
>>"But surely even a technical dunce can see that the only alternative to "best effort across the board" is "slow down everything we aren't getting paid twice to transport" "
I'm always wary of people suggesting that there are only two alternatives, since it frequently signifies a lack of imagination.
Just off the top of my head, I'd have thought that one pretty obvious alternative would be 'slow down the traffic that seems to be probable filesharing', since that would be likely in the main to annoy the customers who are actually trying to use an unlimited or high-cap service to the full, and who are hence generally paying rather less per MB than the average customer.
If ISPs were all making huge amounts of money from running an oversubscribed service, wouldn't that leave room for someone to make slightly less money by running a less oversubscribed one, or one where different (or no) priorities were set?
I guess it won't take long for organizations such as the MPAA and the RIAA to start bribing ISP's in to slowing or blocking pirated bittorrent and newsgroup traffic. Its probably a lot cheaper then actually finding and effectively charging the culprits.
I hope holland won't follow in the same steps. Freetards forever.
And if you don't do the crime, you won't pay the fine.
Freetard sites should be blocked, it puts the prices up for the rest of us, the law-abiding majority. Ie those of us who don't begrudge chucking a few quid at an artist we like, rather than leeching it for free and spending the cash on Manga Comics. Like the Tards.
The BBC is reporting on this story - I like the reference to pipes http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11773574
Thanks for trying to f***-up the interwebtubez, tory idiots. Why not make all unemployed people's internet connections unable to connect to anything other than job centre and loan shark websites while your at it!
Dear subscriber
As authorised by your loving government, we, your loving ISP, are implementing service management policies to improve your online experience. By identifying and categorising your patterns of use, we will be able to ensure your traffic is managed in a fashion most suitable to our^H^H^H your needs.
In order to better serve our^H^H^H your needs, we have implemented deep packet inspection (bugger - tell them to delete that before maling) traffic analysis (damn - that won't work) improved message handling (that's it!) technology. As an added feature, this allows us to suitably categorise your traffic (bugger - not that) provide you the most appropriate service (yup - that one!) for your Internet use.
WE NOTE YOU ARE USING AN ENCRYPTED SERVICE OR PROTOCOL. SO BLOODY WELL STOP. YOU ARE A BAD PERSON. THE NICE GUV'MINT SAID WE COULD MANAGE YOU, SO WE'RE BLOODY WELL MANAGING YOU. ALL ENCRYPTED TRAFFIC WILL GO AT 1 BIT PER YEAR. SO THERE. NOW SOD OFF^H^H%H^H^H^H^H GO AWAY. OH, AND DON'T TRY IT ON WITH ANOTHER ISP. BY AMAZING CONICIDENCE, AND WE DIDN'T HAVE NO MEETINGS SO DON'T LIE AND SAY WE DID, WE'RE ALL DOING THE SAME THING.
Yours sincerely
Your Loving ISP
"In order to better serve our^H^H^H your needs, we have implemented deep packet inspection (bugger - tell them to delete that before maling) traffic analysis (damn - that won't work) improved message handling (that's it!) technology. As an added feature, this allows us to suitably categorise your traffic (bugger - not that) provide you the most appropriate service (yup - that one!) for your Internet use."
I don't care what you call it. That's illegal under RIPA and nothing in today's announcement suggests changing that. As and when the government suggests that it should be legal for an ISP to examine my traffic before deciding whether to transmit it or not, I will join the outraged commenters on this thread. Until then, I have to say you are all getting worked up about a figment of your own imagination.
How, exactly, are people who pay good money for a decent connection, freetards?
I would agree with you if people were given phone lines and broadband connections for FREE and then moaned that the service wasn't up to scratch.
Everyone on a home broadband connection is on the net because they're paying for it.
How much are VM* going to charge a content generator to prioritise** traffic if it undermines their PayTV business? Are they really going to let customers stream quality TV channels for a reasonable price instead of having to subscribe to over-priced bundles stuffed with a load of crud?
* I don't mean to pick on VM, they just make a good example.
** prioritise == an offer you can't refuse. As in, "Would you like us to prioritise your traffic for a 'reasonable' fee? No? Oh well, you know how fragile these 1s and 0s are, it would be a real shame if your bits kept getting 'lost', wouldn't it?"
<-- Man delivering horse's head icon.
>>"...but the website offering key advice and information to abuse victims for example, has to lump it in the slow lane!"
So this website has lots of HD content then?
Do you have any idea how much (if at all) this site might be slowed down, and whether that assumed slowdown is actually going to prevent anyone using it?
I'd have thought that if text-based websites were slowed down to the point of unusability, likely there'd be some kind of consumer backlash.
But maybe it's better to wait and see what happens, rather than leap to conclusions.
Never mind ponying up for games and streaming video; I'd be happy to pay extra just to get an un-tampered-with/throttled/traffic-shaped service. Sadly the great unwashed go all drooly-mouth'd for bundles.
Dear VM, instead of having to pay you for a TV/landline that I do not want, could I give you the same amount of money and just get a decent internet connection instead? No? Thought not.
You can have the decent connection you want, but it won't be consumer broadband, it'll be a business product and you'll pay five to ten times more for it - that's the only way the ISPs can make money by providing you with that much throughput. We pay too little for broadband which is why ISPs struggle financially and everyone complains about what they perceive to be a poor product. The industry is in a race to the bottom...
Well, dur, I'd never thought of that.
You're assuming I want to kick the arse out of it. I don't. I just want decent speeds from a consumer broadband product no matter what I use it for, and am willing to pay for it. £40-odd a month is not, I think, an unreasonable price for such a thing. I wouldn't even care if there were strict downstream limits, as long as they were properly applied - i.e. not being sinbinned for hitting it hard over a single 24-hour period out of an entire month of light usage would be a good start.
I agree, I don't give a tos about the crappy payperview box or cracking phone line that is so crap I can bearly hear anything, I 'd just like a decent web connection that doesn't disconnect every couple minutes, a monthy contract that is easy to get out of and less of the 40 quid a month for this heap of con, ta. sucker (your customer)
So, all the ISPs hold out a cap to BBC, Google etc saying 'go on, give us some cash and we'll prioritise your traffic over those of your competitors who .. err, don't have the same content to serve now we come to think of it'.
BBC etc say 'no, we're happy not paying you thanks all the same'.
So in (a rather naive) theory we should then be back where we are now as no content provider will want to hand over money to every single ISP, so all traffic will continue to be equal. I can't see an ISP refusing to carry content for a provider, or they'd just lose their customers. Likewise, throttling traffic is a very different thing to not prioritising it. If they throttle all traffic because the providers haven't got out their wallet, the result is you don't get more than 1mbit out of an 8mbit line and they're back to square one in being accused of not delivering on their stated speeds.
Startups will never be able to afford the fees for priority service, so it basically stops people competing with existing firms.
What an excellent way of stopping innovation.
I wonder how much this is costing Vaizey in analysis and transport costs, and who is providing some lobbying fees for him to do the analysis, and whether it's in a brown envelope or not.
...who are locked into (by financial or contractual reasons) their crappy ISP. The rest of us will see new market segments develop which offer higher levels of service for regular traffic, just like we have ISPs with lower contention ratios, no traffic shaping, and no data caps, despite predictions to the contrary. I don't see any reason for history not to repeat itself, because there's always an opportunity for business where changing market conditions make a fat juicy gap.
The big elephant in the net neutrality room - at least in the UK - is the divide between those of us forced to pay BT Whoselale twice as much to sit on their crappy copper network and the much lower cost of having broadband in an area with 21CN (or those lucky fuckers with FTTC).
"(or those lucky fuckers with FTTC)"
In that case I'm an extremely lucky f**ker as I had fibre to the home installed 9 days ago.
Or so I thought. My average speed so far has been 7Mb - a whole 5Mb lower than my ADSL line was!
If it's no different tomorrow (end of the 10 day settling down period) BT are getting a serious complaint - it should be up to 40Mb!
Been thinking about this and reading variations on the story on other websites and something hit me. Notice that one of the things that gets mentioned in a lot of stories on this today is iPlayer. Now this is what got me thinking, why mention iPlayer specifically and not, for example, YouTube. I'll bet more bandwidth is used every day in the UK by YouTube than by iPlayer. Well...
Remember all the ISPs shouting about iPlayer taking up bandwidth? Most of the ISPs concerned were those who wanted to provide their own IPTV service. Without a doubt the most hypocritical of these was BT. BT provide BBC (and other channels') content as a watch again service on their BT Vision boxes, but the difference between BT Vision and iPlayer, 4OD, et al? BT charge. That's right, those of you who have never seen BT Vision may have missed this, but BT charge actual money to watch BBC reruns. You can see why they'd want iPlayer throttling can't you? Why would anybody pay for content they could get free elsewhere.
Playing two or more competing providers off against each other to see who will pay most to have their content prioritized is one thing. Prioritizing your own content is another altogether.
So I'm hoping there's going to be some regulation here. Starting with BT. There is absolutely no way that somebody offering a charged service should be allowed to throttle competing products, free or otherwise. We're not talking about netneutrality in that case, were talking about restricting competition. The problem is that I suspect this sort of thing goes against the "light touch" that the condems are talking about. They don't want to regulate, they want to save themselves the trouble and the cash. I suspect therefore what we are likely to see is this being fought out in court rather than being regulated, leaving the consumer in the middle of a big fight until the dust settles.
To do it simply; either ISPs need to be seperated entirely from content providers, so BT Vision needs to be done away with and Sky need to have their ISP arm amputated; or net neutrality should be enforced. I actually think the former is the better solution, even if net neutrality is enforced I don't like the idea of an ISP being a content provider of any sort.
I'm not sure what you describe is anti-competitive. People have the choice to buy, or not, Sky or BT Broadband. I don't think prioritisation is the same as throttling anyway - and the BT Vision example is spurious as BT Vision isn't delivered over the Internet, it's a private network that just shares the last mile connection with your link to the ISP.
ISPs will increasing look to provide content - because there's no money in providing just access. Broadband pricing is so low now that no-one new would be able to enter the market because no bank in their right mind would lend a startup a ton of money that can never be re-couped.
I think iPlayer is about to become free on BT Vision in the near future - possibly as a result of BT and the BBC getting all cosy over Canvas...
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The only way I can see around it is to use the same protocol as the one they plan to prioritize but you can bet your ass they will make those protocols heavily encrypted and hard to fake. Plus it will be pegged to your IPv6 address once that comes along and any other IP's outside of that end to end tunnel for your high bandwidth 'Youview' (Already agreed on by OFCOM) gets immediate demerit to the internet toilet.
A lot of people here seem to be getting upset about the possibility that they won't have net neutrality, guaranteed by some legislation and then policed by some nosey government body. Has nobody realised that the terrible future with no net neutrality they described is actually the current situation? Are there any ISPs that do not stipulate their right to constrain any traffic that they deem to be excessive? How about business broadband customers who have a lower contention ratio than domestic customers? Some large corporate customers may require a maximum average latency to certain specified points - and they pay to have this in their SLA. The unfair Internet described is already here - but it still works, ISPs are not dropping VoIP or VPN connections and the end of the world has not yet arrived.
I think the point is that it's the ISPs making the decision and taking the money, not the consumer/business/whoever.
For example: Medium Corporation Ltd pay £000s to Megabig ISP PLC for a 100Mb dedicated connection to the net.
Megabig Corporation PLC then pays £000s to Megabig ISP PLC to prioritise its traffic over Little Company. Medium Corporation Ltd accesses a vital service provided by Little Company but although it's got a super-fast connection, Little Company's traffic is trumped by Megabig Corporation PLC's so its received at a much lower speed.
It's no good for Medium Corporation Ltd to go elsewhere because Megabig Corporation PLC has paid £000s to other ISPs too.
In Europe we are not very familiar with the US practice of charging someone to send an SMS message and charging someone else for receiving the *SAME* message.
Now our ISPs can charge someone for providing content and charge us for receiving the same content.
Does anyone else see the similarity?
This will not make anything faster. It will make some slower though.
We are unable to receive the digital BBC stations we contribute to ,other than via iplayer, without paying a further tithe to Rupert Murdoch. We aren't scheduled to get terrestrial digital coverage until the year after next. There is no cable/fibre option either, the market forces didn't force the cables or fibres down here. Allowing market forces to decide priorities in traffic or infrastructure will lead only to enrichment of the shareholders , not meeting public need. The laws for commerce in this country make the shareholders interest paramount. What happened to the idea of caching Iplayer files or other heavily used files at the ISP? If Sourceforge can manage localised caching...
Customers pay to get access to the Internet, providers pay to stick their servers in data centres. You get 10mbps, 100mbps or whatever rate the pipe to the next router is, to send and receive lots of 1s and 0s with, to any other Internet-connected machine. As far as I'm concerned, that should be the end of it.
But hey, that's not quite enough money is it?
All we need is just *one* ISP that will stick with giving customers what they actually want - an internet connection with which to do what they want, when they want, at the speed that is being advertised and paid for...and we'll be golden.
This approach smacks of what could be tantamount to a price-fixing scandal.
I give Sky some kudos, as their service has generally been about doing what you want when you want, but their speeds have been steadily declining over the last few years, and I'm worried they're succumbing to the temptation to squeeze in lots more customers at slower rates. I'm likely cancelling them soon.
I wonder about this - Murdoch has been campaigning constantly about the BBC and it's dastardly "free for all" revenue model scuppering his plans at world domination of the internet news space - What's the betting that the whole of the BBC domain splutters to a halt for users of the Sky broadband package ? Super fast acess to the Times Paywall for all ?
Mine's the one with a copy of Ariel in the pocket (not really)
What does The Register feel about this? One would assume El Reg will be penalised by bandwidth dedication to rival news services? Though I personally think all ISP's should refuse to accept QoS payments from the Daily Mail as a standard.
I love everyone ranting about the end-user's point of view. I'm a web developer, and about 10 years ago I was running a fairly successful web-based game (like the point and click things you find on facebook and on those really annoying ad banners "OMGFREEBROWSERGAME!!!!" and such). It was fairly active with around 1000+ active users a month, but I wasn't generating any revenue from it and shut it all down as my day job left me with little time to work on it.
Over the past 9 months I've been re-writing it all with the intentions of launching it again with a whole free/paid-for model, along with smartphone and desktop clients. With the 2-speed Internet, what damage will it do to hobbyists with successful sites and small developers?
And what happens to sites like Wikipedia? Would they deliver at dial-up speeds as they would likely not pay the levy?
As a site with little in the way of video or HD content I doubt readers of The Reg would notice a thing. Prioritisation is not the same as throttling - I guess the effect will be much the same as corporate users get when their comapny moves to an MPLS model with web, email, video and voice all over the same LAN. The traffic prioritisation means that voice continues to work in real-time, the effect elsewhere is barely noticeable, if at all. Sometimes there's a one second pause before a website loads due to high voice packet traffic, but it's no worse than a delay anywhere else in the network would cause.
I am horrified by the prospect of the end of net neutrality. Imagine if these ideas existed outside the realm of the internet:
Imagine if the Royal Mail was to offer a service where those who could afford to pay would be able to guarantee next-day delivery of consignments which would be prioritised over everybody else's mail. Imagine if train companies offered separate carriages for those passengers prepared to pay a premium fare. Or if rich people could buy bigger houses in better areas.
The way the internet should work is that 5% of customers should be allowed to be responsible for 70% of the traffic and the rest of us should subsidise those people.
OK, so maybe the pipes are the same size for all content providers at the moment, but the speed of your internet connection also depends on the hardware on the other end. If that's inadequate, you'll get a rotten service. It's the provider who has to pay for the servers that provide a good service.
So this is just like moving the pipes into that part of the system that the provider has to pay for. It's a change, certainly, but is it really that big a change?
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