BT Wants Cash For iPlayer, Video Bandwidth

eldavojohn writes "British Telecom is asking for more money for the bandwidth that iPlayer and video streaming sites eat up. The BBC's Tech Editor is claiming that 'Now Britain's biggest internet service provider is making it clear that, in a cut-throat broadband market, something is going to have to give — and net neutrality may have to be chucked overboard.' The BBC and BT are currently already in talks over how to get past this together. This might sound like a familiar battle from over a year ago."

Comments

That's the way BT is

[Aceticon]

Don't forget that BT is the incumbent telecoms operator in the UK - they were originally a state owned monopoly and got most of their infrastructure in place using taxpayers' money.

These are the same guys that were holding back broadband in the UK a couple of years (all the while broadband adoption in the rest of Europe was taking of like crazy) ago until laws were passed forcing them to allow other ISPs to use their lines. Even now, they will still make it extra hard to use ISPs other than themselves.

They currently censor their customers connection using the list from the Internet Watch Foundation (a state controlled quango) - the same guys that were blocking Wikipedia some months ago - and will voluntarily give contact data for an IP address to any "content owner" who asks for it.

These guys are not the good guys and they haven't been so for many years now.

Re:Solution

[Keeper Of Keys]

Nice idea, but the BBC is a public service and would probably be violating parts of its charter by doing this.

BT should paying the BBC

[OdinOdin_]

BT is the principal landline telecommunications supplier in the UK. Most of their income is generated from being a wholesale infrastructure supplier, so I don't understand why there is a "bandwidth delivery problem". Since BT must have the cheapest cost of getting bandwidth from one location in the UK to their customer base. BT can well afford to put multiple 10GbE into LINX and/or BBC directly and connect 1GbE into every local exchange/Point-of-Presence.

So the question has to be asked, what specific thing is it that stops these things from taking place ? Could is be that upgrading equipment at both ends of a fiber optic medium might increase bandwidth by 10 fold but decrease the comodity value of that same bandwidth by 8 fold. Which also has the effect of decreasing the comodity value of all other bandwidth products a telco has for sale. Net result is less profit.

BT inherited their network from the government when it was the "GPO", maybe it is time for the GPO to come back so that the monopoly position BT has is rebalanced against the technological improvements of the past 10 years that a state owned entity could push forward. Some people in the UK don't like privatisation and other people don't like nationalisation, but I say we should have both (at least 2 companies) and let the customer spend their money with the company who best serves their interests.

It is my understanding that when you are a content supplier, people pay you to get connected to you, since you have the content that your "consumers" are paying you to get to. Within reasons the cost of bandwidth is free to the BBC (over and above some ~£million costs to setup, own and manage). Internet bandwidth at neutral exchanges must look pretty cheap compared to satellite video bandwidth needed for a world leading TV, radio, news and media organisation. The money for connectivity flows in that direction, consumer to producer.

The invasion of the paid-for content...

[Archtech]

Unfortunately we have different communication technologies overlapping here, each with its traditional pricing structure. They don't fit.

The Internet has always been free to the end-user, thanks to the generosity (and perhaps intelligent self-interest) of parties like the US federal government, owners of the many servers that forward packets to us all, and - let's not forget - even telcos. Where I live, in southern England, I can buy ISP service for about $20/month upwards. That gets me continuous Internet access using ADSL, over a telephone wire designed for speech only, with a maximum bandwidth of about 2Mbps (because I live 3 miles from the exchange). On a good day I might get 2.8 Mbps, on a bad day (and perhaps due to contention) down around 1.5 or even less.

Now this is perfectly adequate for almost everything I want to do. I use email (and have since 1980); download with ftp; browse the Web; and other such traditional activities. The only time I bump my head on the ceiling is when I have to download a really big file, or (occasionally) watch some streaming video that I can't download in its entirety first.

Where it breaks down completely, of course, is if I want to download (or worse stream) movies, watch live sporting events in full glorious technicolour on a large screen without graininess or intermittent motion; or watch TV. That's because the Internet was never intended for those activities, most of which are better adapted to the plain ol' steam TV set (complemented by a video player, DVD player, etc.) Why on earth would thousands (potentially millions) of individuals download high-bandwidth material over separate, contending, low-bandwidth links, when much of that same material is freely broadcast through the air they breathe? It doesn't make very good engineering sense. More to the point, it doesn't make good economic or business sense. Movies, TV, sport, music and other live entertainment have traditionally been things you had to pay for - whether by buying a ticket, subscribing, or just watching tedious commercials.

AFAIAC, the really important aspect of this whole thing is that the Internet itself should remain free - as in speech and as in beer (apart from content-neutral ISP fees). Unfortunately, there are pople like this http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=19552&tag=nl.e539 who reckon otherwise. We have got to make sure they don't get their way.