Next summer will see the beginning of throttling BitTorrent by Virgin Media

As UK ISP Virgin Media makes way for its new 50Mbps broadband package the introduction of application-based restrictions will see the speeds of connections for users of BitTorrent and other P2P applications throttled at some point during the middle of next year.

The boss of Virgin Media has, however, said that as an alternative to illegal file-sharing ISPs and copyright holders should work together in order to create a viable content platform. Neil Berkett, the boss of Virgin Media said “I think it’s an issue of fairness.”

A spokesman for the company said “Broadband has become integral to delivering home entertainment services and with data consumption growing rapidly, we are exploring new ways to enhance our product offering. Part of this involves intelligent monitoring and understanding the way people use our broadband service.”

Berkett said that it would be “naïve” for any ISP to not look to addressing customers illegally file-sharing whilst continuing to increase broadband connection speeds, this came after announcing its launch of the new 50Mbps broadband package. This was part of a “digital conscience” that was appearing within the telecom industry.

He said “I think it is naive, to say the least, for a network provider on one hand to be talking about leading in next generation broadband and creating intelligence across their networks that ultimately they can monetise, and then (to be) sticking their head in the sand and saying they have no obligation to help in terms of (protecting) intellectual property. Ultimately I think creating the right partnership between content providers and the platform (ISP) is going to be critical. You can’t legislate for this, for Christ’s sake.”

The proposals in France and the UK for the mandatory filtering of content by ISPs is something that Berkett is strongly opposed to and instead believes that content delivery platforms should be created by ISPs and copyright holder and “where the customer says, yes, that’s value for money, I will change my behaviour as a result of that.”