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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[quote comment="348115"][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.[/quote]
…says the fucktard with the dumbest cunt on the planet for a ruler. The UK is just following YOUR lead.
Where’s your constitution now? Since Dubya’s stripped you of your most basic of human rights, it seems that YOU are the one “taking it up the ass”, you sorry twat.
[quote comment="343290"]thank fuck for talktalk[/quote]
Never, EVER say that.
I live in Australia now, did live on Somerset, went to visit relations a couple of months back, they’re on talk talk. Their service is slow and unreliable. It took 4 months for them to realise the reason we couldn’t connect to the net was because they had a problem in one of the BT boxes they rent.
Virgin is a good company, but new age money hungry cunts like this man, should be shot and buried in a hurry. We’ll see what good ol’ Branson will be doing when 60%+ of his customers suddenly stop using their connection.
As one of the leading countries in the world of and for everything UK should surely be upgrading rather than pondering how to charge more for a poor service.
This is not good
I have set up a petition dedicated to stopping this new threat from virgin media at http://www.phoenixfox.info/sayno
sign it to help stop this from happening
(this petition WILL be sent to Richard Branson and to Virgin Media)
Unfair, simple as that.
Dude. This news story has a virgin moble phone ad in it.
damnit.
Virgin can fuck off, have they never heard of freedom of expression and freedom of speech. The Internet is for everyone not just Virgin.
Once people get to the top they seem to have no need for principals?! What a shame. I guess he does not know that from thereon it can only go down.
What is the point? The point is that there is no neutrality because everyone has an opinion. However, you can create neutrality and thereby win the crowds. ISPs are selling connectivity and not opinions. So what he is doing is to ask people to put Virgin Media on a bus lane. Seems like a very old story and for a chance for all the smaller ISPs to get some new customers.
This might explain a lot of the slowness on my connections. It totally sucks if true.
First virgin denied us Sky’s “premium” TV channels without even asking us consumers, just because it thought they were asking too much. Never even gave us the option. Now they’re denying us bandwidth and reasonable download times. This stinks because they’re the only cable-based TV and internet provider in England. I don’t want a satellite dish for my TV, and I’m too far from an exchange for DSL to be even worth thinking about.
Virgin have an effective monopoly here, but because other providers supply similar services, the monopolies and mergers commission can’t do a bloody thing about it.
This might explain a lot of the slowness on my connections. It totally sucks if true. First virgin denied us Sky’s TV channels because it thought they were asking too much. Never even gave us the option. Now they’re denying us bandwidth and reasonable download times. This stinks because they’re the only cable-based TV and internet provider in England. I don’t want a satellite dish, and I’m too far from an exchange for DSL to be even worth thinking about. Virgin have an effective monopoly here, but because other providers supply similar services, the monopolies and mergers commission can’t do a bloody thing about it.
Absolutely disgusting. When, in the history of the internet, have different speeds been available at different prices? This incredibly new development may well threaten the very fabric of space-time.
One word, CUNT!
DONT F*CK WITH OUR NET NEUTRALETY!!
this just seems aonther nail in the coffin to our so called free world the internet was once great, i dont think it will be in years to come !, unless you have a big wallet!! (like those people eaning big money like CEO’s of ISP’s), they all forget what actually made the internet what it is today !! and it wasn’t having to pay for everything, and just remember copying music and films has been going on since tape was invented ok on not such a large scale but it has always happened and always will, why dont the BPI think of a better was to change things and instead of a song costing 79p a track make it 15p people will just not bother trying to download off a bit torrent site, i truly beleive that the music and film industry are creators of there own doom, they have enjoyed making millions of pounds for many years paying so called stars millions for a single role or album, well why should they earn more than then next man and given the global market surely there is still plenty of money to be made.
virgin media and the bbc are just a bunch of money hungry pigs. just look a the bbc with there tv license you have pay them yearly for bbc1 and bbc2 which nobody even watches. i wish they would both just fu<k off
IMPORTANT… here is a link to the virgin complaint form… the form ask your virgin account number among other things… BUT YOU DON`T NEED TO … JUST FILL IN ANY NUMBER AND ANY NAME AND THE FORM WILL BE EXCEPTED!!! I HAVE MADE MY OWN COMPLAINED AT THE END OF THE FORM PAGE
(remember you don`t need to be a virgin member to complain just fill in fake information where it is required and make a good complained to virgin).. HERE IS THE LINK…!!!
https://help2.virginmedia.com/assets/customer_zone/complaintformCZ.html
ps..you can also call them or send them a letter…. the link for that information is here;
http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/contact/complaint-feedback.php
We should get what we are paying for.
Fucking greedy bastards.
Well Crandom, Ive got 20mb and I get full 20mb Speed. Im stuck with virgin because any adsl providor I would get max 2mb but mostly 1mb service which I couldnt use.
I download a lot of 8GB files and virgin throttle my speed down to 5mb for a 5 hours or so a day, I hate how they are getting away with it because IM paying for the 20mb service so I expect to get it. If I could move I would but im stuck with virgin, and I know a lot of other people will be due to how crap adsl connections in the UK are :(
Hey I have some more information about np10 broadband.
Apparently the np10 firm was set up by ex NTL (now Virgin) guys. Just look at the postcode of Virgin Media, Tesco Internet etc - all starts with NP10!
COULD BE TRUE
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