David Williams, the Chief Executive of UK Satellite ISP Avanti Communications, has warned the European Union (EU) telecoms commissioner (Neelie Kroes) that imposing a rule of net neutrality upon Internet providers would result in consumers having to pay more for their broadband.

Last week saw Kroes warn telecoms firms and ISPs that Europe could prevent them from charging online content providers (e.g. BBC , YouTube etc.) to deliver their services to Internet users. This would stop the preferential treatment of specific data traffic and support a principal of network neutrality.


Williams continued on to say that big telecoms providers had effectively been forced into a "Mexican standoff" by the "content free loaders". He also suggested the strain such a policy might place on "unlimited" style broadband packages could result in demand for content falling dramatically.

In our opinion it's only fair that UK consumers should pay for the data they consume, just as with your electricity, gas or water supply. Of course here in the UK that notion of truly "unlimited" broadband only really exists with a small modest number of providers (e.g. Sky Broadband UK). See our recent 'Uncovering ISP Fair Usage Policies (FUP) and Traffic Shaping' article for another take on this.

Most UK ISPs, often even those that promote an "unlimited" service, already impose forms of Traffic Management and Shaping to help balance the load on their already shared networks; others prefer a policy of usage caps (GigaByte Allowances). Many ISPs even impose speed restrictions on P2P and similar heavy download services.

In other words the UK is already separated from network neutrality, though ISPs would still like to keep their prices low and one way of doing that is to charge content providers like the BBC. This would of course run the risk of potentially stifling development of new online content businesses, with only certain services being given preferential treatment.