Virgin Media boss restates opposition to net neutrality

The intervention comes in the week that e-commerce companies, pressure groups and journalists wrote to the Government encouraging it to back five principles that would underpin net neutrality.

Some telecoms companies believe that they should be able to charge content producers for improved access to ISP customers.

Consumer groups and open internet activists, though, believe that ISP subscribers should have the fastest access to content they want, not fast access only to the content belonging to companies that have paid their provider. Those people are in favour of net neutrality, where networks do not distinguish between content providers.

Virgin Media chief executive Neil Berkett, though, has said that his opinion on net neutrality has not changed since a 2008 interview in which he called the idea "a load of bollocks".

"It hasn't changed," he told BBC Radio 4's Media Show "I think we need to come back to the position and say how do we go about funding the internet in the UK? And we do it by having a highly, highly competitive market where our prices for the internet are something like half the prices in the US."

"Therefore restricting potential investment by the internet service providers by putting a regime such as net neutrality in place I think is the wrong thing," said Berkett. "Having said that, whatever you do in this space must be completely transparent."

Executives from Skype, Yahoo!, eBay, the BBC and the National Union of Journalists wrote to Minister for culture, communications and creative industries Ed Vaizey to express their hope that he would protect the net neutrality principles that they espouse.

"We welcome your recent statement that the UK Government supports access to the open Internet," their letter said.

"In particular we support your call for adherence to the openness principle both for fixed and mobile access to the Internet, whereby 'consumers should always have the ability to access any legal content or service [and] content and service providers should have the ability to innovate and reach end users'," it said, quoting a  speech Vaizey had made.

All ISPs routinely engage in traffic shaping or traffic management to ensure that limited bandwidth is shared fairly between users, some of whom may be very heavy users moving around large files and others of whom might make light, but essential, use of a connection.

Net neutrality campaigners do not often object to such technical measures, though the letter to Vaizey expressed discomfort at the degree to which it goes on.

"End-users' choice of which applications, content, and services to view, use or run is already restricted in the UK today, especially when accessing the Internet on mobile," the letter said. "The Government's commitment to the open Internet must be reflected in action on the ground to remove any such arbitrary restrictions to the open Internet. We also recommend the Government’s policies on the open Internet and traffic management take account of citizens’ access to public services online in the future."

Berkett said in his 2008 interview with the Royal Television Society's Television magazine that Virgin Media was negotiating with content producers about 'more effective' access to Virgin subscribers which would speed up the rate at which their content reached subscribers.

A Virgin Media spokesman said today that there was a "fundamental difference" between technical traffic management and discriminating between content based on who had produced that content. "There are no plans to do the latter," he said.

Berkett also said in the BBC interview this week that Virgin Media had not yet decided whether or not to pursue legal action against a digital television platform to be launched next year by the UK's major broadcasters.

YouView is a scaled-down version of initial plans after competition authorities rejected the first set of proposals because of the negative effect it would have on the market for wholesale television content.

The scaled-down plans were not blocked by the authorities and Virgin Media was said to be considering demanding a judicial review of the plans.

"We are reviewing our options. We were disappointed and when we've completed that review you'll certainly hear about it," he told The Media Show.