End of Net Neutrality, and the UK is leading the way...

[Milambar]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11...y_net_neut_no/

I am deeply saddened, and concerend by this. How soon before personal websites and blogs are unreachable, because they haven't paid an ISP to carry them..

[Ignitionnet]

No-one said anything about blocking content and certainly not personal websites and blogs, pointless exercise.

I would suggest taking a deep breath and waiting to see how it pans out. Anyone who doesn't like what their individual ISP is prioritising and how traffic performs can, of course, choose another provider.

The UK hasn't been network neutral for years, VM recently joined the non-neutral club.

I'll adopt a wait and see approach. Fundamentally I'm a consumer who will choose another service if the one I'm on isn't appropriate to my needs. Oddly many people appear to think that their ISP should change policies or roll back policy changes to conform to their requirements rather than simply leaving the ISP if it does not and choosing another that does. An ISP changes their service to your detriment you can thank them very much and take your money elsewhere.

[Milambar]

The problem with "wait and see" approaches, is that by the time you "see", its too late to do anything about it, as the involved parties are already entrenched, and the things are already moving and damn near impossible to stop.

As for changing your ISP and taking your money elsewhere, you know thats a fallacy, as every ISP will be doing the same.

I am not blaming the ISP's, they are a business, and their priority is to make money for their shareholders in any manner they can. They do not exist to serve the customer, that is just.. a byproduct of their main aim of making money.

I do blame the government for allowing it, however. The government should be there to protect the consumer against the machnations of big business, to look after our rights. I wrote to my MP 4 times about this when it was first proposed. Fat lot of good that did.

[Mick Fisher]

Yet another self regulation fiasco on the horizon?

Certainly looks like it to me.

[Rob]

A potentially lucrative new revenue stream will be opened up for ISPs, with services that depend on speed or other network quality factors, such as video and online games, likely to be first to be asked to pay for delivery guarantees.

Oh thank you very much indeed.

So I rent a gameserver from a provider in a datacenter so that I can enjoy shooting my friends. Does that mean that, because we all have different ISPs, I'm now going to have to pay a lot more to my server host in the hope that they can then shell out money to all and sundry ISPs so we can still enjoy the experience? Correct me if I've missed something, but doesn't my payment of monthly fees to my ISP cover me for getting a reasonable service in the first place, but this now means I could be paying twice for the priviledge

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Milambar

The problem with "wait and see" approaches, is that by the time you "see", its too late to do anything about it, as the involved parties are already entrenched, and the things are already moving and damn near impossible to stop.

And the problem with acting before anything is even announced (as a lot of Net Neutrality fans have) is that by acting before you know anything, you don't actually know if the action you take is either warrented, or going to work.

As for changing your ISP and taking your money elsewhere, you know thats a fallacy, as every ISP will be doing the same.

See above. Not every ISP will show an interest in doing this. Indeed, a significant number of ISPs already shape traffic, but not all do, and not all have plans to.

I am not blaming the ISP's, they are a business, and their priority is to make money for their shareholders in any manner they can. They do not exist to serve the customer, that is just.. a byproduct of their main aim of making money.

I do blame the government for allowing it, however. The government should be there to protect the consumer against the machnations of big business, to look after our rights. I wrote to my MP 4 times about this when it was first proposed. Fat lot of good that did.

So, you don't blame ISPs for wanting to do something that's going to make them money, but you do blame the government for not stopping them?

Personally, I don't think the ISPs will be hitting the small sites with charges. It's not worth their while. At best, it won't make them a lot of money. At worst, it will wind up a lot of their customers. Neither is a good situation for any business, be it an ISP or not.

No, they will go after the sites that get a lot of users. Things like iTunes, the various streaming sites (Youtube, TV on demand sites etc).

Look at things another way. If you buy physical items (like CDs) via mail order, Amazon (or whoever you buy it from) has to pay an awful lot of money in taxes to help keep up the roads they use in getting the product to you. If you download the same CD from (say) iTunes, how much does Apple currently play to help maintain the infrastructure between you and it? Nothing beyond it's own datacentre costs.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Milambar

The problem with "wait and see" approaches, is that by the time you "see", its too late to do anything about it, as the involved parties are already entrenched, and the things are already moving and damn near impossible to stop.

As for changing your ISP and taking your money elsewhere, you know thats a fallacy, as every ISP will be doing the same.

I am not blaming the ISP's, they are a business, and their priority is to make money for their shareholders in any manner they can. They do not exist to serve the customer, that is just.. a byproduct of their main aim of making money.

I do blame the government for allowing it, however. The government should be there to protect the consumer against the machnations of big business, to look after our rights. I wrote to my MP 4 times about this when it was first proposed. Fat lot of good that did.

I totally disagree. Budget ISPs may use this as an alternative revenue stream to prop up their finances and as a solution to overcongested networks however to suggest every ISP will do this is absurd. Some will choose not to specifically to use that as a selling point.

The fears of ISPs blackmailing content providers into paying for carriage are likewise unwarranted I feel. I have zero doubt that ISPs will set up agreements with content providers to prioritise their traffic, but it would be just that, prioritising their traffic, everything else remains best effort and if the bandwidth is there to fill all requirements there won't be a problem.

It's about guaranteeing the quality of a service. It's very much within the interest of a premium video site to make deals with ISPs to get preferably access to their customer base while the BBC and Google won't be as bothered as they aren't directly charging.

ISPs already operate non-neutral networks, this just gives the green light to pimp that lack of neutrality.

I haven't heard from any ISP that wanted to discriminate against services to force them to pay, that leads to messy public spats and customers being encouraged by content providers to jump ship which benefits no-one.

Much ado about nothing. IPTV operators already prioritise their own TV service to the detriment of other traffic flowing down the IP circuit.

---------- Post added at 18:01 ---------- Previous post was at 16:42 ----------

Originally Posted by Ed Vaizey

Openness – consumers should be able to access any legal content or service. Content providers should be able to innovate and reach users.
Transparency – providers should set out in detail the extent of their traffic management and the impact on customers.
Support for innovation and investment – ISPs should be able to manage their networks to ensure a good service and have flexibility in business models. Competition is important for ensuring continued openness and choice.