Broadband minister asks ISPs to better 'regulate' industry
UK.gov enlists Sir Tim Berners-Lee to make noises about 'open web'
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Communications minister Ed Vaizey is calling on ISPs to beef up their commitments to providing UK customers with information about how they manage online traffic.
At a meeting attended by broadband firms BT, TalkTalk, BSkyB and Virgin Media yesterday, the minister approved of the industry's efforts to agree to "greater transparency for their traffic management policies," according to the Financial Times.
Google, Skype, Yahoo and Facebook representatives were also at the meeting, alongside officials from communications watchdog Ofcom.
The ISPs have agreed to acknowledge the Broadband Stakeholder Group's best practice code, which was announced earlier this week. UK.gov has been calling on the industry to self-regulate the system.
"The challenge ahead is to build a common view on how we safeguard the benefits of the open internet whilst also ensuring ongoing investment and innovation," said BSG boss Antony Walker.
"It is important that this is based on the realities of what is happening in the UK market, rather than what is happening elsewhere in the world."
In the US, the government's communications regulator has sought to mandate so-called "net neutrality". The only trouble there is that the Federal Communications Commission's first official rules on net neut have pleased no one.
Vaizey, whose opinions on net neutrality have wavered in the past few months, said yesterday that Sir Tim Berners-Lee had been asked by ministers to work alongside ISPs on guidelines to help broadband companies expand their commitment "to cover managing and maintaining the open internet".
ISPs have been mulling a two-tier system where connections to the internet are slower for some customers depending on how they use their broadband service.
"The potential for something going terribly wrong is absolutely there," argued Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group.
"The regulator and government do not wish to intervene, for good reason, but industry is not putting forward anything that looks like meaningful self-regulation." ®
COMMENTS
What a guy...
I really respect Sir Tim Berners-Lee
I wrote to him with a few questions on the traffic shaping being carried out by my ISP and he replied with a crucial point which answered my questions. This led to me focusing on the correct aspects of Net Neutrality as opposed to just being an angry consumer
Please note, he does not believe QoS to be against Net Neutrality as detailed in his video to the US Congress (It's on youtube)
I really hope he is on board
Don't mistake Vaizey for someone who know's WTF he's talking about.
He likes this because he thinks it will help him with both the "Age rate all internet sites" *and* the "3 warnings and we cut you off " b****cks of the Digital Economy bill.
His interest in this is *solely* that a less "neutral" net (or rather the big ISP's that hold c96% of the UK market) have demonstrate they have the spyware (or "traffic shaping" equipment as they no doubt prefer to call it) in place to do *his* bidding.
It's asynchronous
I believe it's a two way thing. At the moment it's a bit like upload speeds. You get more speed down than up on current DSL technology.
Likewise ISP's need to be a bit more transparent about how they handle traffic instead of burying vague terms and conditions way down in the smallprint which nobody reads because it's never supplied to them in the postal agreement nor is a link given to them in an email when you sign up online.
Basically ISP's need to stop hiding and lying about what you can do with your connection you are paying for. I understand that connections need to be traffic managed. Otherwise those few people hogging it 24/7 will impact everyone else. The reason prices are kept competive in the broadband industry is because they can squeeze so many customers into a limited pipe. There's no point buying bucketloads of fatpipes if it never gets utlized either. It's costlier to the ISP and the customer.
I have no issue with traffic management as long as it is made VERY clear in the T&C's. But the problem is ISP's advertise unlimited when in fact it clearly is not.
Same goes for BT who say they have just lifted the 300GB limit on their full fat milk Infinity package. As long as they were to send an email out to every customer letting them know this I would be happy with it. But I don't know if they have and it's only through news outlets like this one that we know of it.
Basically ISP's need to converse more with their customers and being honest about just what they mean by 'unlimited'.
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