BBC and ISPs Clash over iPlayer

randomtimes writes "A row about who should pay for extra network costs incurred by the iPlayer has broken out between internet service providers (ISPs) and the BBC. ISPs say the on-demand TV service is putting strain on their networks, which need to be upgraded to cope. '"The iPlayer has come along and made downloading a legal and mass market activity," said Michael Phillips, from broadband comparison service broadbandchoices.co.uk. He said he believed ISPs were partly to blame for the bandwidth problems they now face. "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 said. ISPs needed to stop using the term 'unlimited' to describe their services and make it clear that if people wanted to watch hours of downloaded video content they would have to pay a higher tariff, he added.'"

Comments

Re:Why isn't it treated lake any other utility?

[BForrester]

It's too bad there aren't any good widgets out there. This is the best program I could find for measuring total daily, weekly and monthly bandwidth usage. (My ISP charges per GB after a certain limit). It runs in the tray, doesn't have a high resource footprint, and it works.

http://www.shaplus.com/bandwidth-meter/index.htm/

Re:Amen

[TheRaven64]

I've complained to the Advertising Standards Agency about some of the claims made by ISPs in the past. Their response was that claims made on a company's web site do not constitute regulated advertising, and unless I can provide them with evidence of the same claims being made elsewhere, they can't proceed. Since most ISP's adverts in other media are so vague that it's difficult to even tell that they are an ISP, I haven't spotted any. If you see any, there's a form on the ASA web site you can fill in, and they will be fined accordingly.