BBC and ISP's clash over iPlayer

[LouisBlack]

So they intend on shafting their very own customers, the sames customers that line their pockets. I can't see how it's going to work out for them in the long run. Customers will take their business elsewhere if they perceive that popular sites are slower than others. They are treating their customers with complete and utter contempt.

I quit Virgin Media because sites such as bbc.co.uk seemed to be in the "bus lanes".

I too had left Virgin Media for their awful traffic shaping. We paid £35 a month for a 10Mb/s connection and, on occasions, received around 200Kb/s. Even at it's fastest at 4am, it still crawled along. Apparently it was because too many people in our area had Virgin Media connections.

My current 5Mb/s ADSL connection is infintely faster than Virgin's 10Mb/s (Virgins top speed at the time).

 

[Vidd]

You'd think that in 2008 that concepts like net neutrality would be seen as disgusting by more people.

 

[arkitect]

I too had left Virgin Media for their awful traffic shaping. We paid £35 a month for a 10Mb/s connection and, on occasions, received around 200Kb/s. Even at it's fastest at 4am, it still crawled along. Apparently it was because too many people in our area had Virgin Media connections.

My current 5Mb/s ADSL connection is infintely faster than Virgin's 10Mb/s (Virgins top speed at the time).

I guess I am just really very very lucky then.
No problems with shaping or speed issues… Virgin 20Mb. Consistently fast - even right now (18:50) speed test came out at 19563kbps…

 

[Eraserhead]

Here's what Virgin Media's CEO had to say about net neutrality:

'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.'

'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"'

Though he's going against Google and the BBC for sure. And I also can't see Apple paying anyone for content, especially as Apple and the BBC and Google appear to be best buddies these days.

Also aren't bus lanes usually faster than car lanes anyway? Making his analogy crap too.

EDIT: I doubt they could get Microsoft involved on this, it would stink of monopolising which they really want to get away from, it'd also piss off third party developers as they'd then have to pay to distribute security patches and stuff, not good.

 

[Killyp]

Also aren't bus lanes usually faster than car lanes anyway? Making his analogy crap too.

Technically no if the roads are designed correctly - cars are faster than buses. Unfortunately most roads seem to be designed by seven year olds.

 

[Eraserhead]

Technically no if the roads are designed correctly - cars are faster than buses.

But isn't that the point of bus lanes to enable the buses to go faster than the cars so people use them. Wikipedia agrees too.