The UK government's communications minister, Ed Vaizey, announced yesterday that he believes ISP's should be able to discriminate against certain content providers which place high demands on bandwidth. This could then see providers forced either to pay a charge to ISP's to ensure that their service is given adequate support, or face the prospect of having users' experience suffer due to bandwidth choke (i.e. performance that is slow, jerky etc) - this is where the question of traffic management becomes one of net neutrality.

Now this certainly makes sense from point of view of most ISP's - they would enjoy the luxury of an added means of maximising profit by reducing the costs to them of provision and, with data transfer costs representing a key challenge for ISP's in recent years, this decision would see shares bounce impressively.

However the problem is that users' have already had to face increased costs from ISP's as a result of the way the internet has changed in recent years (advent of streaming services and so on) by virtue of the rapid increase in costs of unlimited data contracts. These days some sort of monthly allowance seems to be much more the norm, whether in the case of mobile or fixed domestic broadband services. So users' are already paying in one way for the colossal surge in the quantities of data which people wish to send and receive via their connections - no more cheap unlimited data contracts, instead we have cheap 10 GB/month (roughly the average) contracts or expensive unlimited ones.

This industry move seemed quite sensible to most and indeed reflected what was happening in related areas (such as mobile phone contract provision where, again, cheap unlimited contracts which could be found a few years ago are gone) and was largely accepted by consumers. So why this further step towards abandoning net neutrality from the UK government?

Well, I'm afraid that the bottom line is simply that - for ISP's. Vaizey's proposals would be welcomed with open arms by telecommunications companies, who would see profits increased, but few others. Let's now go through some of the counter arguments:

1. The move would damage innovation.

This seems likely to be the case - or, to be more precise, the move would tilt the 'playing field' in favour of established providers of data-intensive content (video and audio streaming services for example). The reason would be that while ISP's would be unlikely to offer slower access to established services - such as iPlayer for example - they could more easily get away with side-lining lesser known start-ups since this will be unlikely to turn users to an alternative provider. The problem is that Youtube was once one of these lesser known start-ups, so imagine how different things would be if its growth had been stifled by a rules change such as the one Vaizey is proposing.

For this reason the announcement is very puzzling to me, especially considering the government has paid a lot of lip service to the digital economy which it hopes will lead Britain to a more successful economic future...

2. The proposals would damage freedom of speech.

This is slightly tenuous, but not entirely invalid. After all, it would simply bring the internet closer in line with print publishing for example, where anyone can launch their own content - assuming they have the capital required to do so. Of course this isn't entirely democratic - but it is already the way most other media technologies operate (television, print etc). The internet has, since its inception, been much more open and accessible than this and was for that reason celebrated by many as a much more democratic platform. To lose this would harm freedom of speech no doubt - but only to the extent that we already tolerate it being 'harmed' by the barriers to content provision existing in most other media sectors.

The second aspect of this objection is that the proposal would set a precedent for ISP's to have permission to 'manipulate' users' vision of what is out there online - which is essentially a mild form of censorship (even though it would here be economically, and not politically, motivated). Is this a dangerous precedent to set? Are we forsaking something which we should cherish? It's hard to see the UK suddenly ending up with a 'great firewall' system akin to China's massive web censorship programme - but even a small step towards this is a big issue.

3. The changes will damage the principle of web neutrality.

This would certainly be the case if ISP's decided to charge content providers more in order to ensure their services run properly. Imagine for example the scenario whereby major content providers like the The Times or The Daily Mail absolutely fly as one company owns both an ISP and some online publishing ventures (because of the News Corp-BSkyB merger), but rivals like the BBC or Guardian chug along. Is that a desirable situation (for anyone other than Rupert Murdoch)?

All in all, it'll take a little time before we know in detail what will happen - but for now the proposals (full speech here) seem rather worrying, and have been opposed by pretty much anyone who understands the internet - from Google to Tim Berners-Lee, Erik Huggers and so on...

The idea is that with content on demand currently revolutionising how we watch video content as entertainment on our computers - there is great potential to extend this too to the screens in our living rooms. Sounds like good sense to me...

Youtube XL features a far more de-cluttered interface than the version we are used to - with no user comments and no other recommended videos boxes for a start, which certainly helps to make it far more easily operable from one's sofa with a tv remote.

However one key issue remains for me and that is pertaining to the quality of content available on Youtube XL. For now the selection of content is identical to that of Youtube standard - which leads me to wonder just how awful some of the shakiest mobile phone-recorded footage will look once it gets shown on the bigger screens Youtube XL caters for.

Having said that though, from inital tests I have been pleasantly surprised to find not as much of a drop-off in quality with displaying low-res stuff on a big screen as I generally expected. A lot of the mid-quality stuff out there actually holds up not too badly when stretched to fit bigger formats - though of course some of the previously dodgy (in terms of video quality) handheld clips are now quite unwatchable.

All in all though a fascinating development, and one that even at this early stage is seemingly leaving users very, very satisfied... good work Google :)

Dejan Levi