Net Neutrality

[Agent]

Every significant Internet provider around the globe is currently in talks with access and content providers to transform the internet into a television-like medium: no more freedom, you pay for a small commercial package of sites you can visit and you'll have to pay for seperate subscriptions for every site that's not in the package.

An interesting watch, even if it does come across as a bit extreme.

I Power

[Jay]

lol.... that would kill the internet.

[staffsMike]

Ah well.. nice while it lasted

Assuming that they actually do this I would hope it wouldn't be as severe as having to pay for the "little" sites people rarely use (or a hit count below a certain number).. they would be on "freeview" as it were. The big boys would be the Sky channels to that freeview..

If that's not how it works.. i'll find some new way of wasting my life

[Pup]

I would be very suprised if there was any real truth in this, and it just sounds like another silly conspiracy theory. I'm sure there are some organisations that would love the idea of this, with $$ signs flashing past their eyes... but to get every ISP to sign up to do this and 'control' the internet? It just sounds rediculous.

Surely even if there was truth to this, there would be new ISP's popping up all over the place to give back normal access to the internet. Does this also suggest that forums like these, or even my own gaming clan forums will no longer be accesible to anyone? Just sounds totally unrealistic and unworkable and goes against everything the internet has stood for.

[Jay]

I suppose if they had a centralised DNS sever for all web traffic it could be done but my god that would cost a fortune. No ISP would host a DNS server.

Also you would submit your website to be added to all DNS as a free website if you felt you wanted to. Yes, its just stupid.

[directhex]

I would be very suprised if there was any real truth in this, and it just sounds like another silly conspiracy theory. I'm sure there are some organisations that would love the idea of this, with $$ signs flashing past their eyes... but to get every ISP to sign up to do this and 'control' the internet? It just sounds rediculous.

Surely even if there was truth to this, there would be new ISP's popping up all over the place to give back normal access to the internet. Does this also suggest that forums like these, or even my own gaming clan forums will no longer be accesible to anyone? Just sounds totally unrealistic and unworkable and goes against everything the internet has stood for.

the article goes overboard, but that IS how it's going - some british ips (such as virgin) have made no secret of the fact that websites which don't pay them a fee will have reduced bandwidth to customers. most US isps are going that way too, and arguing that net neutrality (i.e. serving all content as it comes) will kill the industry and lead to global war and hunger

[neonplanet40]

Im not paying to look at just a few sites.

The world just pisses me off these days. You Pay alot for everything while getting sub standard service in return. Its a joke. There has to be a stage when the people in this world say "enough is enough". The same goes for fuel etc!

Im going to take this rant to general discussion

[peterb]

I suppose if they had a centralised DNS sever for all web traffic it could be done but my god that would cost a fortune. No ISP would host a DNS server.

Most ISPs do host a DNS server, usually restricted to their own users.

[Jay]

I know, but if they wanted to have a system like the OP no ISP would be allowed to host their own DNS, it would need to be central.

[Sinizter]

If I cant access any website that I want when I want, the internet then becomes useless for me. I would then just have a bare minimum required for email (mobile phone contract will probably give me that over 3G) and thats it. I wouldnt bother getting a small/medium/large subscription.

Wouldnt mind paying a small amount over normal price to get all sites/all protocols without any throttling, but couldnt be bothered with something like only sites which pay virgin can be accessed without limits.

[Jay]

I think a lot of people do not realise the true cost of bandwidth though. If you think a 2MB 2MB leased line costs £8,250 a year then you start to think what a true 24/7 20mb line would cost.

I think the biggest issue ISPs have is that they advertise "up to", it should not be done this way. When you sign up you should be able to sign to a speed that they can actually provide you and this should be the minimum speed you should get. Instead of just "up to" it should "from" and "up to". They are trying to get around the speed by limiting what you can actually use your internet for.

[peterb]

I think a lot of people do not realise the true cost of bandwidth though. If you think a 2MB 2MB leased line costs £8,250 a year then you start to think what a true 24/7 20mb line would cost.

I think the biggest issue ISPs have is that they advertise "up to", it should not be done this way. When you sign up you should be able to sign to a speed that they can actually provide you and this should be the minimum speed you should get. Instead of just "up to" it should "from" and "up to". They are trying to get around the speed by limiting what you can actually use your internet for.

That is true - bandwidth is not free! The problems the ISPs have is that there are so many variables with the final line that it would be prohibitively expensive to taylor each contract to every user.

One (more open) approach would be to advertise rate adaptive ADSL it as "guaranteed 512Kb/s" service - which is really the true position - but a marketing persons nightmare - but that in fact is what we have - anything above that is a bonus. (Of course, before raye adaptive, the service speed - up to a maxi,um of 2Mb/s pretty much was guranteed - but more expensive - as is usual, you get what you pay for)

[mikkri]

ISPs should get new lines and keep going rather than try to force customers into paying more for the same service. British market isn't open for competition, that's the problem here. In my place I have Virgin and BT as the only providers with cable infrastructure and that's in London - financial capical of the world! Pretty soon even third-world countries will have better internet connectivity at such pace. And almost free!

[Sinizter]

New place I am moving to has a massive choice of ISPs - BT, Orange or TalkTalk. ***** useless. Not sure which of these evils I will be picking - other than it wont be Orange.

[Saracen]

Im not paying to look at just a few sites.

Nor me.

If any service provider thinks I'm paying them a fee in order for them to be able to decide that I can only visit the sites they allow .....well, can I have some of what they're smoking, please?

I lived most of my life without the net, and can do so again. There are things I'd miss, for sure, but it's not the end of the world. Not for me, anyway. So if that article in the OP is correct, and I don't believe it is for a moment, then it's goodbye net for me.

[Tidus]

A bit over exaggerated but I suppose that's what you need to do to get some people more aware of problems like this. Some people are comparing broadband to the radio, where everyone was free to broadcast but then it was regulated, virgin escalated the situation by calling net neutrality “a load of bollocks”.

The state of broadband in the UK is bad if you compare the speeds some country's are getting. About a year ago BBC News compared broadband costs and performance, Japan, Sweden, Korea and Finland were all offering 100Mbps connections on fibre networks. Japan's price for broadband per megabit per second was 11p while the UK was £1.81.