Scammell went on to suggest that the UK creative industries may be better off looking at more secure, faster network based systems to ensure reliable file delivery rather than rely on the increasingly congested, and open internet.

The announcement in full, follows below.

The Government’s meeting with the Broadband Stakeholders Group last week, highlighted that it is now almost inevitable that ISPs will further facilitate a variable speed Internet, where content from certain providers willing to pay a premium for faster audience access is prioritised over other content traffic.

The original Internet was an egalitarian one. There is no doubt that its founding concepts – equal participation, standard protocols and a simple network design offering best effort – are under attack. Yet, consumers’ increasing demand for high-quality, streamed content has already forced many existing ISPs to break the concept of net neutrality by discriminating over certain traffic, whilst enforcing their own congestion control.

You can certainly see why the BBC – firmly against paying anything to prioritise its content – is currently developing a traffic-light system to let consumers see how different ISPs treat its popular, iPlayer service. Red for poor, amber for OK, and green for acceptable. It will be interesting to see how consumers react to ISPs that are slow to deliver!

For UK businesses and especially the media industry which is rapidly turning to digital, file based systems to send and receive huge data packages, across the globe, the added uncertainty that the delivery of business critical data will be stuck in a larger traffic jam to facilitate the optimum content delivery of premium subscribers, does not bode well for business. On top of the already precarious nature of Internet security and uptime reliability issues, there really has never been a better time for businesses to forgo their addiction to the Internet and look to other alternatives such as dedicated private networks for reliable content distribution.

For UK creative businesses, in particular, with an increasing reliance on the electronic delivery of huge amounts of data, it would appear imperative that more efficient, secure network systems are seriously looked into and fast.

Dave Scammell, CEO, Sohonet