Internet service provider BT has admitted to throttling provision of the BBC iPlayer, and has called for content providers to shoulder some of the costs of content provision.
Last week the BT was accused of limiting download speeds for iPlayer, the BBC video content player. On Thursday a BT spokesman admitted to ZDNet UK that it had been throttling the iPlayer and other video-streaming content on its basic customer package.
"We throttle video traffic to 896Kbps for our Option 1 customers, between 5pm and midnight," said the spokesperson.
The spokesperson added that content publishers such as the BBC should not get a "free ride", especially in the light of a government report expected to recommend broadband for all UK citizens, due next Tuesday.
"Next week Lord Carter will present the Digital Britain report," said the spokeperson. "What everyone wants is high speeds, low prices, 2Mb connections. We don't think it's realistic for content owners like the BBC and others to continue to get a free ride."
The spokesperson said the burden of cost for high-bandwidth connections should be shared between content producers and providers. The spokesperson was unaware of whether BT had approached Google, the internet giant that owns YouTube. ZDNet UK understands that YouTube accounts for 30 percent of broadband traffic at peak times.
"Traffic is growing," said the spokesperson. "The idea that ISPs will continue to pick up the bill is unsustainable. We want to work this out with the BBC and other content owners to come to some real-world compromise."
The spokesperson said that BT could not pass the costs onto customers, as that would make the business uncompetitive.
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"Prices are heavily constricted by competition," said the spokesperson. "Part of Digital Britain is low prices so people aren't locked out. That BT would not charge a lot more for broadband is dictated by the realities of the market."
All ISPs are not in the same market situation, the spokesperson added.
The BBC said in a statement that the amount of bandwidth iPlayer consumed was a "small percentage" of the UK total.
"Despite its popularity, the BBC iPlayer is just one of the many services on the open internet and only makes up a small percentage of total internet traffic in the UK," said the statement.
During peak hours, iPlayer pushes out 12GB of data every second, and seven petabytes (PB) of data per month. BBC iPlayer total broadband usage is approximately seven percent. However, the BBC already pays content-delivery networks (CDNs) a small amount of money to put its content online, ZDNet UK understands.
Talkback
So BT are seemlingly holding content companies to ransom - pay up or face sanctions (streaming throttling). Their accountants are up in arms - they used to depreciate the assets of telephone exchanges over 25-40 years. Now they are having to do the same over kit which is 3 years old - its bringing them out in a cold sweat - and all because of content providers such as the BBC / youtube.
Esimating demand for the internet is difficult enough, BT obviously got it wrong - badly wrong - they though copper would be sufficient. They have just spent a billions in 21CN (hoping to string out the massive investment in copper for a few more years) - its already looking like 'home highway 64kbps streams' did in comparison to ADSL-seven years ago when comparing ADSL to Fibre 100Mbps today. However you want to promote it (20Mbps ADSL2+) - it just doesn't cut it.
They really don't seem to get this Apple iphone world, riding the wave - costs money,you take risks. Being at the forefront is the difference between winning and failing-blending into the background with the other thousand or so chinese devices on the market. The incumbent/utility approach doesn't work - you need to be like Apple.
My take on it is BT is it sees the iplayer as the perfect 'bolt-on', they can control access, the BBC charge an upfront monthly fee and BT take their cut in collection of the revenue. Its a new model, but it would raise Billions and they want a slice of the cake for its collection, they want to rewrite the internet.
The key point here is by implementing this model isn't it destroying the internet as we know it?. A free resource of knowledge/information - its power is immense, more than any single company - if BT walked away - there would be a hundred companies to take its place to provide access- don't believe their tears, this seems to be all about licence fees, subsidies and trying not losing their monopoly.
There is certainly a case for the BBC to switch its main form on transmission to the internet, become in effect a National ISP. Providing enough 'core' bandwidth to every house for say 2 HD channel broadcasts 24 hours a day as part of the licence fee and any unused traffic could be sold back to the ISPs for use for other internet services. The licence fee in effect become part of your Broadband fee. The radio bandwidth of TV could be sold for billions to help pay for this switch over. I think this is where BT are heading, or trying to - maybe this is the real slice of cake they are looking for.
BT have been grumbling for months about the added traffic that iPlayer is imposing on them.
Their option 1 package comes with a 10Gb cap for £15 a month. What difference does it make if that is 10Gb of video from iPlayer or 10Gb of other assorted data? Surely the allowance is what matters, not what it's made up of?
Their customers have paid for that allowance only to find that BT aren't happy with them accessing certain types of data and have throttled their access to it. If I were a BT customer I'd be very annoyed about this.
Now I admit that this doesn't affect me personally, I stopped using BT as an ISP a long time ago and would rather eat my own eyeballs than go back to them.
Tying people to a minimum 18 month contract and then constantly changing the terms of it is not a business model that I would ever adopt or indeed agree to.
I use a proper ISP which I pay a bit more for but I have the security of a short term contract and complete freedom to use my generous data allowance in any way I see fit.
This is the way forward. Not BT's approach of selling it cheap and then bleating about how it's financially unsustainable. That's just retarded and the only losers are the BT customers who are for the most part tied into a contract they can't get out of no matter what changes BT make to it. Mark my words, this is only the tip of the iceberg. BT are sounding increasingly desperate and they WILL take more and more liberties with your service.
Vote with your feet. Take your money elsewhere at the end of your contract and leave this bumbling leviathan to sink into the stygian depths of ineptitude from whence it came.
@SeanTheMac,
It would be great if people could vote with their feet but BT have already put paid to that with a revolving 18 month contract. The idea that if you currently get 2Mbps , you'll get 4Mbps is taking a very small sample that live very near to the exchange. This is not the case if you live 3.5km from the exchange where the differences are minimal. ADSL2+ has a maximum theoretical throughput of 24Mbps, BT have decided to promote this as 'upto 20Mbps', and there is currently a good discussion going on with plus.net on their support forums on how to promote ADSL2+. Should it state 'between 1Mbps and 24Mbps' or upto 20Mbps. The point is ADSL2+ can be between 1Mbps and 24Mbps, add in contention ratios, traffic shaping, line quality, distance from the exchange, internal house wiring extensions, saturated BT networks, wireless routers that convert this to wireless and your closer to the 1Mbps than to 24Mbps. All of these reduce speeds or create a bottleneck.
We need 'strategic towns' throughout the UK with the same maximum broadbands speeds as 'London'. Between these stragetic towns we need mobile broadband speeds HSDPA upto 7.2Mbps, within 40mins of everyone in the UK. This allows everyone to live and work in the the communities they know, with broadbands speed which are consistent thoughout the UK. The romans used hill tops with fire beacons - we need the broadband equivalent - its cost effective and fair.