UK warms to tiered internet

UK minister for culture, communications and creative industries, Ed Vaizey, delivered a bit of a shocker at the FT World Telecoms conference in London on Wednesday, calling for a tiered internet, where paid for traffic is prioritised.

Vaizey said that service providers should be free to favour traffic from one content provider over another as long as they present the relevant information to end users and keep them informed.

The move is seen by some as a blow against net neutrality, and Erik Huggers, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, who followed Vaizey at the event, expressed concern that the BBC’s popular iPlayer service could suffer as a result of the proposal.

Commenting on the proposal, Angus Finnegan, head of telecoms at law firm Osborne Clarke, said: “Growth in mobile data services, such as email, music, film and applications, will put huge pressure on our network capacity. On-going investment in network technologies is crucial and Ofcom has made progress on some key spectrum issues in the mobile market; allowing operators to use their 2G spectrum for 3G services and the forthcoming 3G ‘expansion’ auction.

“Allowing operators to provide different levels of service is said to be a necessary network management tool. Even without any regulation ensuring net neutrality, the existing European and UK rules should provide adequate protection if we go down this road,” Finnegan said.