Forums : Virgin Media CEO attacks net neutrality

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/a93556/virgin-media-ceo-attacks-net-neutrality.html

Thursday, April 10 2008, 17:15 BST

By James Welsh, International Editor

Virgin Media CEO attacks net neutrality

Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett has attacked the principle of net
neutrality, whereby internet service providers do not interfere with or
degrade the speed at which content is delivered from websites to
consumers, branding it as “b****cks”.

Berkett's cable operator ranks as the second largest internet service provider in the UK with approximately 3.6m customers.

In an interview with the Royal Television Society's Television
magazine, Berkett said that “this net neutrality thing is a load of
b****cks”, and revealed that Virgin is already in talks with unnamed
content providers about paying to have their content delivered faster
than others.

Feeding into the debate between internet service providers and the
BBC over iPlayer, Berkett even warned that public service broadcasters
who choose not to pay for faster access to Virgin's subscriber base
would end up in “bus lanes”, effectively having their content delivered
to consumers at a lower speed.

Thus far, Ofcom has made little comment on the network neutrality
debate. In 2007, long before the current iPlayer discussions, the then
Ofcom policy chief Douglas Scott indicated that the regulator planned a
“hands off” approach to the issue. Scott has since departed the
regulator for Channel 4.