British Telecomm and Cisco are quietly putting their own answer to Network Neutrality in place: Set up an entirely separate national wide network, Content Connect This will be used to deliver the BBC’s forthcoming Internet video and Video on Demand (VoD) service Project Canvas to users.
Project Canvas will be a set of video and radio services provided by partnership of Arqiva, the BBC, BT, C4, Channel Five, ITV, and TalkTalk to build an open Internet-connected TV platform. It will offer streaming TV and radio through a set-top box hooked up to UK users’ broadband connection. It will also offer DVR-style pause, rewind and record options. Think of it as a UK combination of Hulu, and the Roku Internet video player and you won’t be far off.
For the most part, United Kingdom video watchers will also get it the same way Americans get Hulu: via their ISP. British Telecomm and Cisco, though, plan to side-step the Internet though with Content Connect. This will use Cisco’s Content Delivery System to transmit video, other content directly to your computer, TV or mobile device, and bypass both the public Internet and ISPs.