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Who's going to pay for the internet?

Posted on 12 Mar 2009 at 10:26

"Edge caching is a common practice used by ISPs and application and content providers to improve the end-user experience. Companies such as Akamai, Limelight, and Amazon's CloudFront provide local caching services, and broadband providers typically utilise caching as part of what are known as content distribution networks (CDNs)."

While we might expect Google to play down the edge-caching furore, ISPs and media providers agree that Google's move doesn't damage the idea of neutrality. "It's a completely sensible solution," said Kurt-Elli. "Akamai and other CDNs will cache traffic closer to the user. Unlike CDNs, Google isn't asking for money, just a quid pro quo with the ISPs - a little datacenter space and power in return for lowering network cost access to Google's content."

The BBC plans to use the same technology with its CDN partners, and BT already has distribution nodes in place to deliver its Vision IPTV service.

ISPs claim they'll have to prioritise certain types of traffic if they're to survive. Virgin Media's CEO Neil Berkett recently told the Royal Television Society's Television magazine, that "this net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks", and Virgin readily admits being in talks with content providers about charging to have their content delivered faster than others. "In terms of offering 'express lane' delivery to particular content owners, we've made no secret of the fact that we consider this an interesting, albeit hypothetical, idea," a Virgin spokesman told us.

And in the UK, prioritising traffic is nothing new - it's been common practice for years. BT Vision relies on prioritisation to make sure TV programming isn't disrupted by slow connections, lost packets and general jitter. Plusnet has admitted to prioritising voice calls made across its network, and other providers do likewise. Indeed, ISPs could actually use non-neutrality as a way to tailor services to their client base. "Different service providers will have different priorities they could sell. Our customers wouldn't pay to prioritise iPlayer, but would pay for video conferencing and VoIP, so it's a question of delivering different levels of bandwidth over the same network," said Kurt-Elli.

The telecoms providers are hoping they can find enough services to sell at a premium to further divvy up the market according to who's willing to pay for better bandwidth. "A two-tier system is already in existence," said Andrew Ferguson, editor of ThinkBroadband. "You can pay peanuts and not have access to some services at peak times, or pay more with another provider and get it. Some providers may abuse a two-tier system and, for example, favour their own TV content over others, and that's the area where perhaps regulation is needed. But so long as pricing and what you can do with a connection are made clear, there's no problem.

"It will shock many to find out that providers budget on each user using just 20 to 30Kbits/sec, and they rely on most of us not being online at any one time."

Such forecasting best paints the picture of the ISPs' dilemma. They hoped that if they built it we'd come, but now we're here and tucking in they've realised the entrance fee was far too low.

Paying the price

While the promise of films delivered over high-speed connections sounds glamorous, the bottom line will remain: how much will it cost? The bad news is that households may see higher charges for their surfing in the coming year - especially those using non-LLU ADSL. "In the end, the consumer pays," said Point Topic's Johnson. "The ISPs will develop new ways to charge. People should pay less for the broadband and then pay for every gigabyte over the set limit. Or perhaps there could be a higher monthly charge, and below that users get a rebate for the gigabytes they haven't used."