After last week's idle speculation about the future of net neutrality in the UK, it's nice to see Virgin Media's incoming chief exec, Neil Berkett, advancing the debate with this little PR gem, in which he describes the concept of a level and fair internet as "a load of bollocks". The story originally comes from the Royal Television Society’s magazine, which I haven't seen, but if the quotes are accurate, this is pretty bad news.
Among the other choice morsels highlighted from the piece is a threat to bump any content producers who don't pay up into "bus lanes". Predictably iPlayer seems to be the main target of his ire.
So this will surely be the start of an almighty dust-up. Right?
Not necessarily. Assuming Mr Berkett can keep a lid on his corporate Tourette’s, this is going to be an easy sell for the ISPs...
Virgin Media and the BBC have announced a partnership project, to deliver a next generation media internet to UK homes by 2010. Using intelligent technology, to give greater internet bandwidth to popular multi-media services, the companies claim users will enjoy higher definition, more reliable content on demand.
Neil Berkett, Virgin Media's chief executive, said: "Exciting new web services, such as the BBC's groundbreaking iPlayer, currently have to compete for limited bandwidth with other, less speed-sensitive web traffic. By intelligently identifying and prioritising different kinds of traffic, web users will enjoy a more efficient, transparent service."
It really could be that simple. After all, we've shown time and time again that we'll always chose short term low cost and convenience over some woolly principle. Particularly when the principle in question has an icky name like "net neutrality".
Of course, the practical consequences of such a surrender would hit home pretty quickly. Superior but un-established new services, confined to Berkett's "bus lane", would be at an artificial competitive disadvantage. So, we'd simply stop getting those market-disrupting new players which have injected real innovation and competition into so many stale markets over the past decade. At the very least, new internet ventures would need to generate revenue almost from Day 1, which would be a pretty fundamental change (I believe for the worse).
As we're also seeing with Phorm, the ISPs are desperate to dig themselves out of the "higher speeds at lower prices" hole they've made for themselves, by using access to their own customer base as commercial leverage.
Let's hope we care enough about this to vote with our feet.
Update:24 hours later, The Register is carrying a story, quoting a Virgin Media flack as saying the company doesn't intend to penalise non-paying sites. However, "we recognise that as more customers turn to the web for content, different providers will have different needs and priorities and, in the long term, it's legitimate to question how this demand will be managed."
Just so we're clear then - giving the big boys a faster pipe is not the same as bumping the plebs into the "bus lane".
Phoof. Didn't see that coming.
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