Net Neutrality Erosion in Europe - Thanks to Video

We’ve predicted that the growing video adoption causes traffic patterns that are antagonistic to NSP business models. Now we are seeing this in practice, and it seems that the promise of Net Neutrality as we know it today may not be sustainable.

First, The Independent published an article (also in The Register) detailing threats against the newly launched BBC iPlayer service in the UK. BBC is one of the first Media conglomerates to propose such a widespread VOD service, and the situation is getting the scrutiny of the global distribution value chain. It could be that the UK’s NSPs are first movers in delivering such a publicly visible threat because they have access to collective bargaining in the form of UK’s Internet Service Providers Association. We’ll be watching to see if IPSC takes up the charge, but it seems like this action would be counterproductive to their stated mission to promote “competition, self-regulation, and the development of the Internet Industry.”

Note that BBC’s use of the Verisign/Kontiki P2P distribution technology may not be helpful because traditional P2P systems are notoriously unfriendly to ISPs; a large fraction of all packets [painfully] originate off-network.

The other story comes from a Dailymotion blog responding to QOS problems in the French market. Apparently telco Cegetel has been actively throttling video traffic, effectively blocking availability to local users. Attempts are being made to circumvent the blockage by using CDN Limelight. I would be remiss if I didn’t add that Dailymotion competes with Cegetel’s own Neuf TV broadband TV offering, which offers bit rates up to 5Mbps for HD. The blog entry is here in French and translated by Google into English.

Are we predicting the future for AT&T, Google, and Uverse?