Virgin Media CEO Says Net Neutrality is “A Load of Bollocks”
Written by enigmax on April 13, 2008The new CEO of Virgin Media is putting his cards on the table early, branding net neutrality “a load of bollocks” and claiming he’s already doing deals to deliver some people’s content faster than others. If you aren’t prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he’ll put you in the Internet “bus lane”.
Net neutrality really is the hot topic at the moment. Ignited by the Comcast fiasco, the concept of net neutrality has certainly been brought into the mainstream. Most ISPs are never quite forthcoming about their throttling, capping and otherwise interfering behavior, but that crowd certainly doesn’t include the CEO of Virgin Media, the UK’s second largest ISP.
In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, far from covering up their intentions, Virgin Media’s new incoming CEO Neil Berkett - who joined the Virgin Media Board just a few days ago - has launched an attack on the ideas and principles behind net neutrality.
“This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks,” he said, adding that Virgin is already in the process of doing deals to speed up the traffic of certain media providers.
With around 3.5 million customers in the UK, and already traffic shaping due to lack of capacity, it’s a sobering thought that at the behest of “content providers” with deep pockets, Virgin is prepared to speed up their traffic, which would presumably have a negative impact on those at the bottom of the ISP’s priority list, namely bandwidth hungry file-sharers.
Berkett then turned on the BBC and their iPlayer service, telling them - and other public broadcasters like them - that if they don’t pay a premium to gain faster access to Virgin Media’s customers, their service would be put into “bus lanes”.
It just shows that some ISPs are happy to throttle just about anyone in the name of profit, it’s just that most aren’t as open about it as Mr Berkett.
via DigitalSpy
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231 Responses
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Im currently downloading a torrent, I am on Virgin Media Im lucky if the speed goes above 150kb and while I do download everything else is slow as hell even if Im not uploading too fast to cause this. And you know the best of it ?? This is a legit paid for file from Blizzards store for a game.
The way I see it they are throttling my connection even though I download legit paid for software.
I am a top flight 20meg customer of Virgin`s, throttled to within an inch of dial up speeds. As soon as my contract is up I am GONE. I managed a couple of years ago without a `pooter altogether….Way I see it I`ll be saving fifty pounds a month.
What the fuck is wrong with VM??? Why the fuck are they doing this??? We all pay the full amount of money to these sons of bitches but they cap our speeds by way less than half for 10 fucking hours a day. Biggest scamming mother fuckers on earth!
Surely a bus lane is a fast way of getting lots of people somewhere when the rest are sitting in a traffic jam of cars with one person in each? I guess the CEO of Virgin Media hasn’t a clue as to what bus lanes are for?
Seriously though, it’s really annoying having such limited access to BBC IPlayer in the late afternoon and all evening.
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