While I’m not particularly a net-neutrality zealot (it’s hard to care about it when most of the world’s poor are without any net connection at all), I’m nonetheless surprised by the bullishness of the recent remarks by Neil Berkett, Virgin Media’s CEO. I’m more taken aback, however, by his choice of phrase: he says that Virgin customers who don’t pay a premium are likely to be put in the Internet’s “bus lane”.
I don’t know how much experience Neil Berkett has of bus lanes—I will gladly credit him with enough of it to speak from a position other than that of the pompous, ignorant millionaire who thinks the only way to use a bus lane is to drive a bus—but in my own universe the bus lane is how buses get into the town centre far faster than private transport. If I were a customer looking at Virgin Media right now, to determine whether or not it was worth signing up with them, I’d scarcely pay more for less: that counts for both connection speed and managerial intelligence.
