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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[quote comment="345961"][quote comment="345524"]
Virgin Media broadband was rubbish. Traffic managed after reaching a ludicrously low daily limit, and frequently down so I had no connection at all. If you want to complain, it means calling a rip off premium rate number. I’m glad I ditched them.[/quote]
Virgin allow you download as much as you want. It does not apply traffic shaping between the hours of 9pm and 4pm the following day. 19 hours of unshaped downloading.
If your download speeds seem slow maybe the fault lies with your PC.
Are you using the ethernet connection or wireless and USB? Have you a firewall running?
Are you on a Virgin fibre optic connection?[/quote]
for me, if I download around about 100MB during the day, the speed drops by about 80% from about 5pm until 9pm for that day only, so thats about in line with whats said above.
VOIP requires practically no bandwidth anyway, so your problem has to be something else
But last year, my connection dropped to less than dial up speeds and constantly dropped out altogether, calling virgin didnt do any good, but my dad works near one of Virgins offices, so he went in through a ’staff only’ door, and wandered round til he found someone, they couldnt find a problem at their end, so they gave him a number to get a free direct line to phone them.
so he called them, and arranged for a technician to visit a week later, a week later, no one came. he called virgin again, and he was told that they forgot to tell someone to come, and the soonest free slot was 2 weeks away.
he called virin again and told them that he wanted to leave them, and told them why. 15 minutes later a manager phoned him back. and a technician visited us at 8:00 the very next morning, and found that all we needed was a new modem.
[quote comment="347103"]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.[/quote]
The Cog dictionary of bitter and ironic truths of life, defines a ‘CEO’ as:
“A very rich and arrogant asshole, often to be found out of touch of reality and searching for fresh victims to bleed dry”
This shows the sickening greed of Virgin Media and their “load of bollocks” staff desicions.
People are expected to pay top money for a service that they are only HALF getting, if that.
They need to wake up and see that when a customer is paying for a service, then that service should be provided 1000%, OVER EVERYTHING.
If they do decide to strangle bandwidth for certain “non premium” sites they are in breach of their contract and quickly would loose many thousands of their previously loyal customers. Including me.
the fact of it is, that we are paying for a connection with a certain bandwidth, traffic shaping and download limits mean that if we use a certain amount of what we pay for, then we get punished.
water is probably the best analogy for this.
if we pay a water company to let us have 10 litres of water every day. but if we use more than 5 litres of water one day, then the day after we are not allowed any water, even though we are still paying for 10 litres that day.
so in reality, ISPs are committing fraud, but the legality gets very complicated because of small print in contracts, and the fact that bandwidth isnt a physical object
virgins about to get fucked…
…violently…
Hello Mr. Berkett.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZL6PjKD584
This begins my official boycott of all Virgin products.
Eat a bowl of dicks Berkett.
virgin owns just about everything now, they even own that bowl
Bandwidth as a human right? What a joke. This is not a human rights issue at all. This is a business decision that he and other ISP’s should be doing anyway. If you cant handle the decision, then move to another ISP. But wait! They will throttle you there too… and why? because you download, and steal music and programs from other people.
“But its my right to have everything I want!!” –sniffle.
Please.. grow up, realize that no one has the responsibility to provide nor do any of you have the right have unlimited bandwidth. Or foodstamps, fancy cars…blah blah
This is hilarious to read your responses.
[quote comment="347671"]I’m a joke.[/quote]
Couldn’t agree more, akunt…
@162 akant
You missed the point. It’s about Net Neutrality and an ISP that tries to install a tiered service model. Other ISPs, maybe all of them would follow and try to turn a profit from those who can pay the most for their content to be delivered.
It’s this mindset that is not grown up. I don’t want anything delivered. I want communication channels and access to information. And I pay for it. Probably most of those you try to ridicule here pay for their internet connection.
What I do with the bandwidth that I pay for is nobody’s business. If it was illegal I would be prosecuted and I would argue my case in court. I do not accept vigilante justice by an ISP that thinks that I might use bittorrent to share supposedly copyright protected files.
Please grow up and realize that all of us have the responsibility to provide an internet that is useful for all of us. It is essential for a society in a digital information age to provide internet access to everyone. That might not yet be a right. But for those who grow up now, it is more essential than phone, mail, newspaper, radio or TV. And we can of course not allow the internet to be turned into a TV show.
[quote comment="347584"]virgin owns just about everything now, they even own that bowl[/quote]
Maybe in that sorry excuse of a British Empire of yours, but in America, our products come from poor Chinese and Hispanic laborers. Virgin doesn’t have any major market share here.
Rightfully so. You Limey faggots just take it up the ass right and left. If it isn’t your government setting up CCTV camera everywhere, you’re taking it up the ass with bullshit like this.
Stand up for yourselves you pussies.
I cant believe you guys arnt seeing the big picture here, if Virgin Media succeeds in limiting Net Neutrality, the Internet, as we know it, it gonna be absolute crap. Your gonna be regulated into download limits, crappy internet speeds, and your gonna keep giving money to these big companies, its never going to stop. All these other big media companies are gonna see that it works, and they’re gonna start enforcing THEIR policies onto the internet.
http://stopvirgin.movielol.org/
visit this and watch it..
what a complete moron, this is what Anon went after Co$ for, tisk tisk.
Neil Berkett is a low life, all these fat cats think about is money money and more money, and they don’t give a damn about ordinary people. Personally I like internet just the way it is, and I don’t see any need in trying to ‘fix’ something which isn’t broken.
I just don’t see any evidence of the companies slowing down or denying anyones connection, just speeding up others.
If his words become fact without complete net neutrality i will cahnge provider. Internet shouldn’t be like the TV if everyone makes a stand then maybe we can keep the Internet for everyone… not just the big companys.
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