Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
United Kingdom Your Rights Online

BT Content Connect May Impact Net Neutrality 138

a Flatbed Darkly writes "BT's Content Connect, a service which many have accused of threatening net neutrality, has apparently launched, although it is unknown whether or not any ISPs have bought or are planning to buy it yet; BT has denied the allegations, from Open Rights Group among others, that this, despite certainly being an anti-competitive service, does not create a two-tier internet. From the article: '"Contrary to recent reports in the media, BT's Content Connect service will not create a two-tier internet, but will simply offer service providers the option of differentiating their broadband offering through enhanced content delivery," a BT spokeswoman said.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

BT Content Connect May Impact Net Neutrality

Comments Filter:
  • by Libertarian001 ( 453712 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:06AM (#34753318)

    She denies that their service creates a two-tier internet, then goes on to describe their service which, is to create a two-tier internet. Nice.

    • by Pojut ( 1027544 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:13AM (#34753390) Homepage

      Marco: "Commissar. I have rehabilitated another group of the party's enemies."
      Murphy: "Ha haaaa! Yeah! What does rehabilitated mean again?"
      Marco: "Beaten the asses of."
      Murphy: "I LOVE new-speak!" ....
      Murphy: "Now, if you'll excuse me, we need to rehabilitate Phil...in the face."

    • by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:16AM (#34753430)

      She denies that their service creates a two-tier internet, then goes on to describe their service which, is to create a two-tier internet. Nice.

      Your problem is that you're mistakenly thinking of them as "tiers." That's not the case. It's more like two different levels of service.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:17AM (#34753448)

        Your problem is that you're mistakenly thinking of them as "tiers." That's not the case. It's more like two different levels of service.

        Lucky bastards. My ISP doesn't even give one level of service.

    • by Fembot ( 442827 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:22AM (#34753498)

      Far more worryingly than a CDN in the exchange which people might *gasp* be expected to pay for, the page promoting it http://www.contentconnect.bt.com/ [bt.com] Seems to include clips of "Elephants Dream" which is CC-BY licensed without any attribution anywhere that I can see.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:28AM (#34753554)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        This wouldn't be a BT first; the Home Hub, their free router, used to rather egregiously violate the GPL [zdnet.co.uk]. MoonBuggy does appear to be right, though, it'd be an interesting debate to have over whether concealed attribution constitutes attribution.
      • by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:38AM (#34753634) Journal
        BT has rolled out a new set of pneumatic tubes. One set if you pay will let your messages move around the UK with delightful burst of Steve Ballmer's "Obsession For BT" - dedicated BT only optical path.
        If you dont pay you can wait for the converted "Bring out your dead" cart to be filled and get pushed along a dirt track. -kept to the shared, oversubscribed best effort networks.
        BT should have spent more on backhaul.
    • by thoromyr ( 673646 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:37AM (#34753628)

      Is it a two-tier Internet, or is it a glorified video-caching service? How is this different from Akamai?

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • They don't need to throttle anything - that would be legally dubious. It's much safer for them to just do nothing, neglecting to upgrade the connection. They will still be providing a 'best effort' service, but just making sure that the best they can do isn't too good.
            • They don't need to throttle anything - that would be legally dubious. It's much safer for them to just do nothing, neglecting to upgrade the connection. They will still be providing a 'best effort' service, but just making sure that the best they can do isn't too good.

              I'm pretty sure this is what Time Warner / Road Runner are doing in my Kansas City neighborhood right now. Every evening I get to see my DL rate drop to .8-2mbps and my pings rise to about 100 with occasional packet loss. It's sad when my 1mbps UL is greater than my DL.

    • These aren't the droids we're looking for.

    • Anyone else noticed this trend in companies where the bad news or damage control is always handled by spokeswomen?

      • No, it seems that's always been done. It does seem like they're more likely to confirm the accusation in the denial now though...

        "Contrary to recent reports in the media, BT's Content Connect service will not create a two-tier internet, but will simply offer service providers the option of differentiating their broadband offering through enhanced content delivery,"

        Or in other words:

        "Contrary to recent reports in the media, BT's Content Connect service will not create a two-tier internet, but will
      • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

        It's logical; both men and women usually react better to women.

    • by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

      No no no, normal bandwidth is 100%.
      premium bandwidth is just a bit more 100%-ier than plain bandwidth.
      They're all equal, some are just more equal than others.

    • by ThreeGigs ( 239452 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @10:07AM (#34753948)

      Um, did you read up and understand what this is all about? Or am I misunderstanding completely what BT is offering? Seems to me BT is simply offering to cache content on their own network to eliminate a lot of network hops, and reduce latency.

      Can someone tell me how an ISP offering to cache media content, for a price, violates net neutrality or somehow manages to create a two-tier internet? Is Netflix _not_ allowed to pay BT to keep a copy of their movies available just for BT customers? Is BT _not_ allowed to cache high usage content that gets repeated hits from their users? I absolutely, positively don't see why anyone is making a big deal of this. Caching servers have been around for ages, and this seems to be just the next logical step. Are caching proxies now verboten?

    • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

      She was probably misunderstood -- "there are no tears here!"

    • Of course it's not a two-tier internet. It's lots more than two!
    • by julesh ( 229690 )

      She denies that their service creates a two-tier internet, then goes on to describe their service which, is to create a two-tier internet. Nice.

      No, no. You misunderstand what she said. The service doesn't create a two tier internet. No, the service allows their *customers* to create two-tier internet.

      Those customers will presumably include BT Openworld, who are a separate company and not even slightly connected to BT Wholesale, honest guv.

  • by snookerhog ( 1835110 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:06AM (#34753324)
    "differentiating their broadband offering through enhanced content delivery" Certainly sounds like two tiers to me...
    • and they do it by throttling down transfers not ascribed to their 'new service', that is stealing bandwidth from everybody else, at least when they are running at full capacity again, they will have no choice but to upgrade their infrastructure so some people can start to enjoy the speed japanese folks got for a base broadband connection plan a few years ago
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        No, they do it by putting mirror nodes in local exchanges, freeing redundant, duplicated transmissions. Not stealing, releasing.

    • Nobody has yet to explain why it's wrong for them to charge for access to their private networks however they wish.

  • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:08AM (#34753334)

    Contrary to recent reports in the media, BT's Content Connect service will not create a two-tier internet, but will simply offer service providers the option of differentiating their broadband offering through enhanced content delivery

    I ran that through babelfish and got the translation: "Fuck you! We'll do whatever we want and you can't do a thing about it."

  • by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:12AM (#34753386)
    By definition, differentiating negates net neutrality

    Do they think people are so stupid that they can just use big words to lie to people? Oh wait...
    • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *

      Don't be silly. Some services will just be a little less neutral than others.

      • No, having non paying client become less neutral is what we are all fighting about.

        *THIS* allows paying clients/customers to become even MORE neutral, while leaving the unpaying client(s) completely the same neutral.

    • What is Content Connect

      The Content Connect product is designed to enable Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to deliver video content within the UK to their customers more cost effectively than it has been possible to do previously. This is achieved by connecting a Content Distribution & Delivery platform to the IPstream Connect and Wholesale Broadband Connect networks. The Content Distribution & Delivery platform will be placed in the broadband network so that content by-passes the ISPs backhaul. Content Connect gives the opportunity for the ISPs to have a commercial relationship with the Content Service Providers (CSPs).

      The Content Connect Basic product is for the CSP market

      The Content Connect Standard and Premium service is available to ISPs who have a commercial relationship with CSPs.

      Content Connect Key Benefits

      End Users benefit from the new Content Connect product:

      TV video entertainment will be delivered to the home through a broadband line with the option of an enhanced experience including HD internet video on TV.

      ISPs benefit from the new Content Connect product:

      Brings ISPs into the content value chain and allows them to earn revenue from delivering internet video from CSPs .

      CSPs benefit from the new Content Connect product:

      CSPs can have their content delivered at a higher quality of service.

      For further information please contact your Account Manager

      I think I like this. It basically says hey, ISPs pay for back-haul bandwidth (i.e. Level 3 plugs into Qwest, NetFlix is on Level 3's side, Qwest lets you access NetFlix, Qwest pays for the ASSLOADS of bandwidth they ring up across their link to Level 3's network), so now ISPs have the option of entering a deal with NetFlix to coordinate between NetFlix, Qwest, and technical consultant BT to get NetFlix's data on Qwest's side of the fence. NetFlix doesn't move; it just puts a back-end link or a copy of th

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        In UK terms, back-haul refers to the connection from the ADSL provider's kit in the exchange ( central office ) back to the ISP's network through the ADSL provider's POPs. This is distinct from the ISP's connection to the Internet ( Level 3 in your example ).

        ISPs which rent ADSL services wholesale from BT Group generally use BT's back-haul but there are various back-haul options ( big players being BE, Easynet and C&W ).

        This BT service delivers content from the POPs, so that the ISP's backhaul is not l

  • "BT's Content Connect, a service which many have accused of threatening net neutrality, has apparently launched, although it is unknown whether or not any ISPs have bought or are planning to buy it yet

    Why would ISPs have to pay to use Bittorrent? Isn't it free and Open Source?

    • Just in case you aren't being silly, BT (in this case) is short for British Telecom.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      They dream to pop each packet and charge Apple, MS, Google ect per packet.
      Until then they will just cash in on the end users addiction for a non buffering connection every month.
      Bittorrent does provide a nice cover in a press release when all non enhanced content hits a hard shaped wall.
  • by hey ( 83763 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:21AM (#34753490) Journal

    Sounds like Akamai

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by click2005 ( 921437 ) *

      Akami is saying 'we can deliver your stuff faster' but BT is saying 'pay us more for everything you dont want slowed down'.

    • There is some overlap here; BT've been in a long-running dispute over alleged prioritisation with the BBC over iPlayer, which is served by Akamai.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by natehoy ( 1608657 )

      I think this is basically an Akamai-like caching server. And I can see where the controversy lies.

      If BT implements this and doesn't intentionally throttle other services, I don't see this as a violation of neutrality - BT is not discriminating against anyone in using the Internet pipe, they are simply maintaining a cache service for those who want to cough up a little more dough for their web sites to be stored in a local cache. BP customers can still access anything they want on the Internet at Internet

      • That is very short sighted.

        It will DEFINATELY become abused because then either everyone needs to start paying, or the service will get so bad that it will become unusable. For example netflix which has PLENTY of outgoing bandwidth, and I which have nearly 10 times the bandwidth to receive a movie can't watch it because it gets bottlenecked by the connection between my ISP and netflix. My ISP won't upgrade their connection, and instead starts to suggest that netflix buy a caching server on their network t

        • I think you may have missed my point, or I made it poorly (which is likely). Let me try again.

          The issue at hand is network neutrality.

          A caching service like this can easily benefit both the ISP and the customer by reducing unnecessary bandwidth, as long as it isn't abused. The gist of the article is that "caching servers bad", and I disagree. I agree that caching servers can be abused, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here.

          So in the network neutrality discussion, do we want to say that

          • You forgot option #4, which is what we currently have.

            Caching for it is allowed, and the ISP is responsible for the implementation, and is free of charge as an added benefit they can market.

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        If BT implements this and doesn't intentionally throttle other services,

        You can stop right there. If BT's pipes were not already massively oversold to the point of pure comedy, they would not be trying to move companies like YouTube to caching servers in the first place. Therefore, the current state of affairs is essentially that they are massively throttling everyone's services. In short, if they implement this, they'd be violating the principles of net neutrality from day one.

        That's the problem. As s

        • by philj ( 13777 )

          As soon as they implement this, assuming YouTube buys in (or is granted free access as a "special" customer)

          I really can't see BT giving away Petabytes of disk to Youtube, especially when it'd have to be in each exchange.

          Having said that, I guess they'd just cache the most frequently accessed content (they'd have no choice, given storage constraints).

  • I don't have the exact statistics, so I may be wrong - feel free to downvote if you disprove this - but I've rarely seen anyone not on a BT line, until the '60s the company which was previously BT had a complete (government-instated) monopoly of telecom infrastructure, and it is known that BT still owns the majority of lines. A lot of TSPs won't give service over anything but BT lines, and I've seen a few ISPs do similarly. If this is being offered to all ISPs on BT's network, as the BBC article claims, the
    • by ledow ( 319597 )

      You're only thinking ADSL - and, yes, 90% of the ADSL out there is over BT-owned copper. There are some phone companies that do LLU so although it uses original BT copper, it's literally only using the *copper* and actually connected to non-BT equipment in the exchange, hence BT has no say over it. Bulldog used to do this but they are only available in limited areas, for obvious reasons (where they can make money by pulling enough people off BT equipment and taking the "risk" themselves).

      However, over oth

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:46AM (#34753732)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Ah, thanks. I didn't realize that cable had reached any significant level of popularity next to the latter two yet; it appears that I was wrong.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    To be fair and having RTFA, this doesn't seem to impact on Net Neutrality at all. This is a BT sponsored CDN (Content Delivery Network) that they are offering to their customers. This does not affect the traffic passing over the network, they are simply offering a network of local hosts to optimise content delivery. Like Akami and other such geographical CDN.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    "[...] offer service providers the option of differentiating their broadband offering through enhanced content delivery"

    BULLSHIT! - Wait we're not playing BS Bingo?

  • by torrija ( 993870 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:40AM (#34753658)
    BT needs disambiguation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT [wikipedia.org]

    Acronyms can be confusing, so please explain them before using the acronym.
    • by PhxBlue ( 562201 )
      You must be new here, expecting the /. editors to, well, edit. :)
    • by Mazca ( 1851182 )
      Yeah, I was worried that the Babylonian Talmud was conspiring against net neutrality again.
    • Specifically, it could easily be confused with BitTorrent in this context.

      • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

        Especially since BT serves a very small country (Britain, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland together don't have the land area or population of Texas).

        If you're talking about BitTorrent, the acronym BT doesn't need to be explained here, but to those of us in Australia, Canada, the US, and in fact every other country in the whole world, British Telecom needs to be spelled out.

    • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

      They should change their name from British Telecommunications to British Sales. It sounds like BS would fit their image better than BT.

  • Going through the content connect website, it appears that instead of content traveling from content providers through the internet to an ISP, then to end users, instead, now it goes from a content connect content provider, who is hosting the content provider's content, held in cache, somehow physically closer to end users, and bypasses the ISP.

    Obviously this cannot be true, but that is what the combination of words and moving images would present.

    Most vexing is the concept that this is supposed to make hig

  • by slashdotmsiriv ( 922939 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @09:55AM (#34753828)

    Similar to those deployed by Akamai and Limelight for their customers, and by Google and Microsoft for themselves.

    A typical case of a Telco moving into an additional market.
    Arguably, it does allow BT to offer multi-tier services. But it is not packet-level differentiation
    in the network, which is the issue at the heart of the net-neutrality debate.

    If Content Distribution Networks violate net neutrality and the /. crowd thinks so, then
    we should be blasting Akamai and Google long time before we started blasting the Telcos.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • No.

      The issue here is preferential treatment of packets originating from CDNs on BT's preferred (paying) provider list. If Google or Akamai offered my broadband connection, and gave their own products preference over other people's competing products, they'd be shot down in seconds by anti-competition laws. The fact that they're paying BT for this service is the very definition of a breach of network neutrality: A packet being given preference over another because of its content, source, or destination.
      • Absolutely not. You don't need to differentiate packet based on content, source or destination to provide CDN services.

        You just need to build a CDN, i.e., caches, mechanisms for content replication close to its destinations etc etc.

        Akamai does not need Telcos to differentiate packets for its CDN to work. Similarly Telco CDNs do not imply that Telcos differentiate packets.

        If I am still not understood, here is the wikipedia definition to make it easier for you.

        "A content delivery network or content distributi

        • My point is that this "Content Connect" service is the equivalent of putting an Akamai cache at BT's central exchanges, so the content from Akamai is always faster than those served from outside the network. It's preferential treatment in exchange for payment.

          Maybe Akamai is a bad example. Think of it more as Skype and $Foo VoIP service. Skype doesn't pay for Content Connect, $Foo does. When the network is saturated, $Foo packets will be given priority over Skype packets, making Skype's service less valuab
    • ...we should be blasting Akamai and Google long time

      We blast you long time!

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Please excuse what is probably a fairly ignorant question, I'm not too clued in about networking.

    A quick look about the BT website in the summary brings up a page supposedly explaining how it works: what they seem to be saying is that they take "Connect Content" and put it on its own server which is physically closer to wherever you are. Then, instead of having to connect to a server, say, 3,000 miles away via choc-a-bloc networks for that video, you're connecting to one maybe one or two hundred miles awa

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Please forgive me for being perhaps a little naive, but the CDN seems like a good thing to me. If I, as a home user, get to connect to a local delivery device, I (presumably) get better service, since there's less routing, less networks with potential bottlenecks, etc. that I have to traverse. If I, as an ISP, get my customers to connect to a local delivery device, then my users use less bandwidth on my backbone network because they are streaming from a local source rather than from somewhere on the far s
      • As usual, RTFA, if you have the requisite skill. The only content on the network involved is BT premium content. There is nothing else there to throttle. Even if you have trouble reading, you can see it in the picture.

        Separate server, separate network, separate service.

    • A lot of people don't like the idea of ISP serving content at all due to the conflict of interest that leads to net neutrality issues. While this particular case is a mild example of it, once we start allowing this kind of thing, it's a slippery slope to all kinds of problems.

  • A lot of the mobile phone subscription deals and some of the 3G internet-only subscriptions have severe limits but 'unlimited' access to sites like facebook and youtube.
    You can also buy additional access to a selection of usual social-media sites for most subscriptions. Look here [three.com.au] for some pricing examples.

    With our restrictive data limits even on fixed ADSL lines i would not be surprised if we get so see some "unlimited access to facebook" deals in the near future.

    Its already bad and it is only going to get

    • by Aphrika ( 756248 )
      The situation is the same here in the UK too; extortionate data charges and use policies, but all you can eat data for YouTube and Facebook.

      I find the YouTube deal particularly annoying, simply because whenever I went over my data limits, it was normally for email and browsing, and certainly not streamed video. So based on the effect that streamed video is going to put a much bigger strain on a mobile network than web and email, I can only assume that backroom deals have been done, and hence a multi-tiered
  • Pay X per month, get 1MBit/second. pay X+Y and get a faster connection.

    The ISPs have always had a market where more money == faster service, we are also used to the idea of paywalls where some stuff is free and other stuff needs money to get access to. So where, exactly, does this idea that everyone should get access to everything for the same price come from? Would it still be "net neutral" if Facebook suddenly started charging $10 / year for "membership"? Is that really any different from your ISP sayin

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • So what are you going to do? Make it illegal to bypass existing internet nodes to deliver IP services? Make it illegal to offer more bandwidth than existing IP services? How about making it illegal to charge more than any existing IP Service? How about making it illegal to charge less than any existing IP Service?

    Why don't we just quit all this nonsense and pass laws for bandwidth and price controls, along with an "IP Commission" to enforce them?

    Oops! Somebody once said "Be careful with sarcasm; the idi

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. - Oscar Wilde

Working...