Network Neutrality Threatened In Norway

eirikso writes, "In June 2006 NextGenTel, one of the biggest broadband providers in Norway, decided to deliberately limit the bandwidth from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. The CEO of NextGenTel, Morten Ågnes, told the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that they will give priority to the content providers who pay for better bandwidth. The Consumer Council of Norway takes this as a serious threat to network neutrality in Norway and wants to call a meeting with the biggest broadband providers in Norway to find a solution."

Missed the update?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It's not news anymore, if you read the fine article (blog, whatever). There has been an update to the text that says that the broadband provider caved in to pressure to stop the throttling.

Re:Missed the update?

[kjart]

I come to Slashdot for the excellent editorialship and breaking news.

Indeed, looking further into the article we find:

In June 2006 NextGenTel, one of the biggest broadband providers in Norway decided to deliberately limit the bandwidth from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK).

And by further into the article, I mean the first sentence of the "Original article". So, to recap, this story misses the update (which indicates that this is now a non-issue), and is reporting on something that started several months ago. Bravo :)

Re:Missed the update?

[tyldis]

I feel the need to clarify this a bit, before the submitter is totally fried for being out of date.

The throttling begun in June, but it was not made public until September 30th when the National Broadcasting Corporation published a statement. After that the ISP in question received lots of angry phonecalls and emails (also from yours truly which happens to be a customer). On October 3rd the ISP declared that it has ended the practise because everyone hated them.

The ISP claim that the free content is growing more rapidly than their infrastructure can handle, and that they prioritize their investments to suit content providers who pay up.
The weird thing is that the same ISP is happily upgrading all their customers with broader DSL access and very actively marketing 20mbit ADSL2+.

NextGenTel changes it's mind

[jgrimstveit]

ITavisen today (reports [itavisen.no] that NextGenTel has decided not to go forward with this any more. Rough'n'quick translation:

NextGenTel follows NRK
By André Lorentsen,
Wed 4. okt 2006 kl. 04:00

NextGenTel customers can now again see NRKs web-tv in full speed.

Norways second largest broadband supplier, NextGenTel [nextgentel.no], reduced in June the transfer speed from NRK.no [www.nrk.no] to it's broadband customers. The motivation was to cut costs.

- We cannot increase the capasity on our lines at the same pace as the free offers from NRK, said marketing director, Morten Ågnes in NextGenTel in a comment to Forbruker.no [forbruker.no].

Fotball viewers pays

But the football leage have always had full speed.

The football league is a payment subscription service, and then we get paid to transfer the programs to our customers, was the comment from the marketing director.

Network manager Bjarn Andre Myklebust in NRK did not like the new strategy from NextGenTel. TV2 [tv2.no] and NextGenTel have always had a very good relationship.

- We don't like that our products get a lower quality when being delivered to the end user, and I guess the customers don't like it very much either. Our principle is that we deliver a high quality product to every broadband companies. From there on it's their responsibility, Myklebust says to NRK.

Crossed customers

To show where the responsibility was, the web director of NRK.no published a message to the customers of NextGenTel. At the same time the maximum speed on NRK's web-tv was reduced to 650 kbps for NextGenTel's customers.

The strategy paid off. Now NextGenTel has changed it's mind and have set the capacity back to the same level as before the reduction in June.

- I got a phone from NextGenTel tuesday morning. They told that they had received some negative feedback from their customers, and that they had realized that this wouldn't work, Myklebust proceeds.

Roles

He claims it was important for NRK to use this case to underline the roles between content producer and distributor.

- It is important for us to show that we deliver content, and that it is the distributors that have to make sure the customers get what they already have paid for.

The case have also lead to renewed dialog between NRK and NextGenTel.

- We are in dialog about long term planning when it comes to transfer speeds. We also evaluate the possibility of a commercial cooperation about paid content from NRK, Myklebust says.