UK ISPs seem to be afraid of the BBC’s new iPlayer service.  The iPlayer allows users to stream BBC shows after they have aired from their computer free of charge.  The ISPs are afraid that this will use up too much bandwidth and make the Internet and other services extremely slow during peak hours.

Tiscali, BT and Carphone Warehouse are all worried that if a lot of users decide to make use of the BBCs iPlayer that this could cause service outages and limit access to the network during the most active hours of the day.

Mary Turner, chief executive of Tiscali UK said, “The internet was not set up with a view to distributing video. We have been improving our capacity, but the bandwidth we have is not infinite.”  I think the folks at Google would argue, they seem to have limitless bandwidth (and storage) as well.

There are already several other services that offer streaming content of TV shows, some free, some paid but whatever the case is, these ISPs fear the iPlayer being far more popular and will therefore pose more of a threat.

Tiscali has suggested sharing network costs with the BBC but as yet, BBC has not commented and unless that strategy can be worked out those who download large files (music or video) will be given limited access during peak hours.

The other suggestion is to use a system where there is “basic” access which would impose bandwidth limiting rules on users or those needing fast access 24/7 could pay a premium for better and faster connections.

While those in the UK may complain about this, those of us State side pay about $50 a month for 4Mbps to 6Mbps connections, in my opinion you guys have it too easy by paying less for faster connections, it’s time the playing field was more even.

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Entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 3:43 am under Internet, Uncategorized.  Print This Post

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