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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if i was a hosting company and i lost members and/or money from this i would sue them for infringing on my and my users rights to free expresstion and for loss of income due to malicious and negligent behavior
IF THIS CARRIES THROUGH YOUR STOCKS WILL FALL YOUR MOTHERS WILL BECOME PREGNANT AND YOUR INTRANET WILL BECOME FOR OF STUPID THINGS NO ONE WANTS TO VIEW…. GOOD BYE FREEDOM… I THOUGHT THAT WE LIVED IN AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE?! O WAIT GUESS NOT
Guys, everyone must say against Virgin because it will be the end of the internet!! Net neutrality MUST SURVIVE.
If they do this they will regret it.
ISPs are getting out of control. Us customers won’t stand for having someone controlling what we are and are not supposed to. Most of us are getting sick of our lives being controlled by these big corporations, and now that they’re starting to decide how we should view our largest insight to the rest of the world they’ve crossed the line. The fact that corporations are willing to call freedom of the internet and net neutrality “a load of bollocks” is a sign that they’ve become too comfortable with the idea that they control the world. This is a sign of the beginning of a major issue, and something the internet using world needs to sit and contemplate, for personally I won’t stand for the idea of my interaction with the vast majority of the world being pigeon-holed by whoever has the most money. The time of money being more important than morality is a timeless issue, and this corruption is a major problem that needs to be dealt with before it gets out of hand.
EVERYONE NEEDS TO SPEAK OUT ABOUT HOW THEY DISAGREE WITH THIS. NET NEUTRALITY IS ONE OF THE LAST THINGS WE HAVE! DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN! EVERYONE HAS A SAY IN THIS! EVERYONE!
@108: [quote comment="345961"]
Are you on a Virgin fibre optic connection?[/quote]
hahahaha - what the hell. You’ve fallen for the adverts. It’s coax from the UBR to your house. Go on, look at the cable, it’s copper. Clueless frickin moron.
[quote comment="343230"]Keep going along this path and they’ll be Virgin no more. They’ll be F&*^ed![/quote]
QFT
pay for your net neutrality
md sc gv
sc md gv
gv sc md
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZL6PjKD584
oh snap anonymous has actually reply’d to this
Keep the internet the way it is, with this happening the internet will DIE, the internet is a community not a fucking Tv show
[quote comment="343203"]Those Assholes Talk like They Are Giving Us The Connection For Free.
I wish he gets Gang Raped.
n.[/quote]
I agree. I hope HE gets violated.
Or possibly choked to death, by a black man deep throating him
[quote comment="343203"]Those Assholes Talk like They Are Giving Us The Connection For Free.
I wish he gets Gang Raped.
n.[/quote]
I agree. I hope HE gets violated.
Or possibly choked to death, by a black man deep throating him
Lol you must be a damn fool to switch to virgin just for the “50 meg service” they claim they will soon get. Don’t forget that other ISPs will likely offer this sooner or later.
For now, why would you need 50 meg vs 20. The internet works completely fine without virgin.
[quote comment="343350"]
I think you’ll find it is 6.75/10, not 3.3, no one uses the adsl version any more.
Look, unlimited 20meg broadband, 50meg soon. The only cable isp in the uk. You can go wrong with virgin, and they do NOT shape traffic, unless you download over 3gb between 7pm-9pm, then you are resitricted to 5meg for 10 hours[/quote]
They restrict you permanently if you’re a “excessive” user, but they refuse to state how much excessive is. I’ve not had speeds over 5meg for months now, and I couldn’t possibly still be an excessive user anymore, because it’s so slow that I can only download about 1gb per day.
How the fuck is this yob the CEO of a major company? This is the last person I would want to be in charge of my isp.
Don’t forget that Virgin Media is just a brand name bought to stick on top of the company, which is actually a merged company made up of NTL and Telewest.
These firms had such bad reputations they had to franchise a new name, presumably to trick people into thinking the company is owned by Virgin. The underlying service is still the same, IE utterly utterly shit.
i dont care if they going to get 50 or 100 meg soon, if they going to ignore the NN principle they arent worth it, after all is easy to improve your broadband if you going to dedicate it only to the few websites that can pay, and second if they have to put restrictions on the amount of data you can download at any time, then they already arent worth the trouble of using their services
Neil Berkett is a cunt.
Do you guys remember the “toywar”? It’s an example how to eliminate corporate arrogance from the web. eToys.com in that particular case.
Here is a somewhat outdated docu about hacktivism including the toywar. It’s 55min/460MB at: http://chaosradio.ccc.de/media/video/information-war.m4v
The web site is in german but the film is in english. The etoy story is between minutes 16 and 22 of the film. Good for morale.
hey guys from UK, check if u have BE around where u live. the best ( unlimited, very fast, very cheap and non-stop line ). Be unlimited is also according to some reviews the best. Two of my friends ( Camden, Clapham ) in Lon have it. Aol if of course the worst lol. Virgin became too fat and greedy.
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