The BBC and ISPs have been rowing over the effects of the BBC iPlayer. In the first 3 months since its launch, more than 42m programmes have been accessed via it’s on-demand TV service and ISPs have said that it’s putting too much strain on their networks.
They believe that they shouldn’t have to pay for the extra network costs it causes, or the upgrades needed to cope with the iPlayer – the BBC should pay. According to Ofcom, it’s going to cost ISPs around £830m to pay for the extra capacity needed to allow for services like the iPlayer. Simon Gunter, of Tiscali, is heading the fight for the BBC to help pay this.
The BBC however, believe that the costs of network upgrades should be carried by the ISPs. And he has argued that “content providers, if they find their content being specifically squeezed, shaped, or capped, could start to indicate on their sites which ISPs their content works best on (and which to avoid).”. In response to this Simon Gunter said it was a “bit rich that a publicly-funded organisation is telling a commercial body how to run its business”.
Michael Phillips, from broadband comparison service broadbandchoices.co.uk, believes that ISPs are partly to blame for the bandwidth problems they face, as they “have priced themselves as cheaply as possible on the assumption that people were just going to use e-mail and do a bit of web surfing”. He thinks that ISPs need to stop using the term ‘unlimited’ to describe their services and make it clear that if people want to watch hours of video content they will have to pay more. However, he also believes the BBC need to compromise.
Tags bandwidth BBC broadbandchoices.co.uk compromise iPlayer ISPs row strain Tiscali video