Bob  explained a few things here:

Quote from: Bob

Probably better to answer taking this blog post into consideration, as we'll be doing away with the centrals soon anyway. In their place we'll have four 10Gbps host links using BT Wholesale's WBMC network. There are five WBMC shared nodes, three in London, one in Manchester, and one in Birmingham (We're using the three in London). London presents the best choice because it has better connectivity to the wider Internet. Linx, LoNAP, Level 3 and most of the main transit/peering suppliers are located in London. If our host links/centrals terminated in Sheffield then we'd have to route traffic across half of the country in order to to get it to our transit/peering partners. This creates latency, costs us money, and generally isn't a very clever way of approaching things. Anyway, here's the latest on the traffic management problem.

I find this a deeply regrettable move.
Not that BT is looking at solutions for better user experience, but that this better user experience will only be for the rich companies, this is for me the end to the idea that the web is great leveller, how long before ISP start to advertise the deals they've made, and how long after that will there be "exclusive" content deals?
Regrettable, and sad.

Quote from: Force9Original

Bob  explained a few things here:

Sure but what he explains has nothing to do with the OP... are you sure you posted on the correct thread?

Probably not, 

Quote from: fourfourdevon

Regrettable, and sad.

Your so right. 

Quote from: Be3G

It's an interesting idea. The moral issue of net neutrality is of course a big one, but on the other hand, I can imagine a lot of consumers quite liking the fact that downloads from whichever companies cough up will be prioritised; something whose effect would be particularly noticeable on some of Plusnet's accounts at certain times of the day.

At the moment, given the amount of capacity we have (more coming online today), I doubt this would make any noticeable difference to the performance of most customer's circuits. I'd warrant a guess that it doesn't do anything to help exchange congestion where it exists either.
Having said that, I personally like Wholesale's approach with this one. Bandwidth usage is growing at an alarming rate, has been for some time, and will continue to do so. Knowing how much this can cost an ISP, I'm sure there are companies out there that would leap at the opportunity to have certain streaming/content delivered to their end users without it eating into their central bandwidth.  To me, Wholesale just seem to be preparing for the inevitable.
Must admit, I'm struggling a little to see a great deal of benefit at this stage from a Content Service Provider perspective though.

Quote from: Be3G

Is this service something Plusnet are looking in to?

Not at present, no.
WCC doesn't work on L2TP connections. It needs PTA instead which is only available on WBC and WBMC Dedicated. Our host links are provisioned on WBMC Shared which means our network isn't compatible. This is still true even when considering the excerpt from one of my earlier posts that @Force9Original has quoted above.
For those interested in WCC, you'll find more details here and here.

For me - the whole capacity based charging model will need a complete rethink as higher speed products appear alongside more content rich services.  There are more and more users starting to use high bandwidth services that never used to.  As an example even my own mother who barely knew how to send an email a few years ago is now using bbc iplayer and other streaming services.
If the products are there that allow streaming of television/films at high quality on demand, then the capacity based charging will either make these services available to the wealthy only, or the model itself will need a serious rethink imho.

Quote from: Bob

Must admit, I'm struggling a little to see a great deal of benefit at this stage from a Content Service Provider perspective though.

Their content gets prioritised above all others, for a price.
Basically its win for the ISP and the big wealthy content providers.
Loose for the not so wealthy content providers.
Loose for the consumer who will increasingly be funnelled towards the content providers who pay the ISP's.
Loose for society as a whole as power and money gets concentrated into fewer hands.

On balance, isn't this a rather similar approach to those websites who farm out content (big or small, text or video) to a CDN?
In that case, the content provider pays for the content to be more accessible (ie quicker) to the viewers.
I guess it could be viewed as UK-specific (I'm not sure if it is only BTw-specific - do any LLUs share BTw backhaul at all?)

Quote from: Bob

Must admit, I'm struggling a little to see a great deal of benefit at this stage from a Content Service Provider perspective though.

I'm thinking about what the true aim of all the FTTx stuff is. Most commentary about VDSL2 label it as "triple play" - which is surely about getting decent (probably HD) video traffic into homes, and preferably in a way that is competitive in the market.
With a 60GB maximum residential package, and excess charges of £1/GB, I would say that the bandwidth charges alone will put people off using PlusNet ) ISP for this purpose. That would mean going for an ISP that already includes the video service (such as BT Vision) or as an add-on that manages to bypass the ISP bandwidth charges.
So could this be used for IPTV services to be sold as an adjunct to standard ISP services?

Quote from: WWWombat

On balance, isn't this a rather similar approach to those websites who farm out content (big or small, text or video) to a CDN? In that case, the content provider pays for the content to be more accessible (ie quicker) to the viewers.

It seems similar, but isn't.
Content providers paying for their own network (or a 3rd parties network) to deliver content in the best way possible to all and sundry is very different from a content provider paying your ISP to favour their content over others peoples content.

Quote from: fourfourdevon

It seems similar, but isn't. Content providers paying for their own network (or a 3rd parties network) to deliver content in the best way possible to all and sundry is very different from a content provider paying your ISP to favour their content over others peoples content.

Do you see money flowing from Content provider to ISP?
To a website owner/CP, the CDN offers the ability for the site to render in a browser quickly, and for video/audio to play without pause or dropout. The ISP gets in the way here, by having to perform traffic management, and can actively undo the work put in by the CP. Money flows from website owner to CDN owner in the hope that his site is more attractive to the visitors, and that they both stay and return, and offer more commercial income to that
WCC offers the same experience to the end-user (although limited geographically), so the difference is in the interplay between ISP and CP.
My current read is that WCC allows a service like the video component of BT Vision to be sold to end-users, so they are the ultimate source of the money here. Will the service be offered by ISPs or Content Providers? I'm not sure which - it might be a partnership, but I wonder if we will start to see a new category of "VSP". Firms/Services such as Sky, Virgin Media, Freesat, Freeview, Top-up TV and BT Vision all act as VSPs, putting together TV-Channel packages (sourced from a variety of content providers) for subscribers to buy, and then deliver those services over a variety of distribution networks.
Surely the money flow here will be from consumer to VSP, with the VSP having to pay the CP for the content, and WCC for distribution.
I have no idea how the relationship between VSP and ISP will pan out - or whether there needs to be one. But I don't see CPs paying ISPs to "favour" their content. Maybe ISPs will end up with an exclusive VSP partnership, and offer bundled services (much like PN dows with Gradwell for VOIP).

A good article on the subject here, bringing up extra points that also questions whether it could be profitable. The only discord is that he reckons Plusnet *could* (technically) make use of the service, which disagrees with Bob's post.
I'd reached the same question in my head: was this really a non-product, whose main function was to allow BT to be more aggressive with "BT Vision", while pointing Ofcom at the fact that they'd opened up their network to competition?