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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.'"
That's exactly right. For years ISPs have been flagrantly misrepresenting their services, using words like "unlimited" and quoting download speeds that you might have a hope of getting within 10% of at 3am. They have been playing their customers for fools, but now that content providers are beginning to provide more and more of their productions, suddenly the ISPs are screaming at the content providers and the customers.
I think that consumer protection laws need to be beefed up to protect consumers against the outrageous practices of ISPs.
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If Net Neutrality laws were in place, the ISPs couldn't be "having discussions" over whether they can extort the BBC into paying them extra. Service providers would then be forced to market and sell their services honestly, because they couldn't get someone else to pay for the bandwidth they're selling.
The BBC pays for upstream bandwidth. Consumers pay for downstream bandwidth. But ISPs don't actually have the bandwidth they're selling, so they want the BBC to pay as well for the bandwidth consumers already paid for. It's ridiculous.
But then who foots the bill for various things like all the ads that get displayed? It's not as simple as a water bill because a shower head manufacturer can't suddenly turn your water usage up in order to promote a new product.
Yeah, it's a bad example, but it's also a bad idea.
Completely mental, even disregarding the obvious point that they're already getting paid at both ends for their fucking bandwidth.
Imagine that you're selling product X. The lovely BBC comes with an application that encourages lots of people to use lots of X. Fantastic! Coke and hookers all round!
Unless you've come up with some sort of freakish business model which relies on people paying for lots of X without actually using it. In which case, well, you're probably fucked.
Good.
I use between 15GB and 100GB of "bandwidth" per month. Storage? zilch.
Maybe *you* aren't using the storage yourself but it takes a lot of space on the government's servers to index and cross reference your 100GB of browsing habits.
The irony is, of course, is the ISPs all put out flashy ads about how broadband allows you to get music and video.
But as soon as people do just what the service was explicitly advertised to do...the ISPs all start bleating.
I don't have any sympathy for them. They did it to themselves - they set the expectation you could use broadband to watch video, why are they acting all surprised when people do just that?
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