Oh dear, here comes another assault on Internet neutrality in the UK. And the fear is it might be a warm-up bout for the main event which will come with the release of the Digital Britain report due this month - the protagonists probably know exactly what's going to be in it hence the softening-up barrage, says Ian Scales.
If the pre-publication summary of the Digital Britain report is anything to go by the final version will contain nothing that could effectively outlaw non-neutral behaviour by ISP's - that is, charging some customers extra (discriminating) for forwarding traffic on the basis of source, destination or content type.
And that could be a real problem. Many observers (and practically anyone who can lay claim to being a founding father of the Internet) thinks that maintaining that simple definition of neutrality is essential if the Internet is to remain the brilliant source of innovation that it's proved to be.
Allowing it to be tampered with, on the other hand, will accelerate a slide towards a corporate carve-up and a long-term innovation bypass..
This battle is just warming up - expect a sustained assault on Internet neutrality over the coming year (and watch the arguments carefully - this is an orchestrated campaign).
The latest utterances in the UK come from John Petter, managing director of BT Retail's consumer business. Petter has been dusting off his copy of The Thoughts of Chairman Whitacre (past of AT&T, now, apparently, taking the wheel at General Motors) who gave the game away in 2005 in the US when he talked about Internet companies getting a 'free ride' over 'his' (AT&T's) pipes. If they thought they were going to get away with that, muttered Chairman Ed in an interview at the time, they were crazy.
And now it's forward to the past. BT's Petter has been quoted in the Financial Times saying, “We can’t give the content providers a completely free ride and continue to give customers the [service] they want at the price they expect.”
It's all the fault of the BBC's iPlayer, apparently. BT alleges that the BBC is getting a free ride over its pipes for its TV catch-up programming, and that its customers' enthusiastic accessing of BBC content is clogging up its network and, worse, actually making the whole business unviable.
Most distasteful of all in this debate is the ludicrous accusations of anti-social behaviour.
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