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BT Wants Cash For iPlayer, Video Bandwidth

Posted by timothy on from the what-do-you-want-cash-for dept.

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."

2 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. That's the way BT is by Aceticon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:Solution by Keeper+Of+Keys · · Score: 5, Interesting

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