Tim Berners-Lee to attend ISP traffic management summit

A gathering on 16 March will be chaired by culture and communications minister Ed Vaizey

The UK's leading ISPs, including BT, Virgin Media and Sky, are set to outline an industry wide code of practice looking at how two-tiered internet policies should be defined.

This will take place at a summit on 16 March, according to The Guardian.

The summit aims to establish a "voluntary code of conduct" that will examine how data traffic should be managed, and ISPs hope this move will fend off an enforced code of practice by communications regulator Ofcom.

Culture and communications minister Ed Vaizey will be chairing the event, and inventor of the web and net neutrality supporter Tim Berners-Lee is also set to attend.

All the ISPs will be revealing how they manage internet traffic, and as a result it will be evident if they throttle certain high data volume services to maintain capacity for all customers on their network.

This news follows what has been a long debate about whether ISPs should be allowed to charge content companies, such as the BBC or Google, so as to ensure faster delivery of services.

Many ISPs, including BT and TalkTalk, believe they should be allowed to form deals with the content providers.