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

This is more about BT Vision than bandwidth

[MosesJones]

BT have a TV over the internet offer called "BT Vision" its suffering (and just lost its CEO) in competition with Rupert "any view that pays" Murdoch's Sky. Now if BT could get a richer experience out of iPlayer and access to a longer back catalogue than simply the last 7 days then this would help them in competition with Sky.

So I'd expect this to end up with BT agreeing to support iPlayer in the same way but an "interesting" tie-up between BT and the BBC around the delivery of iPlayer+ features to its BT Vision customers.

Re:This is more about BT Vision than bandwidth

[FrostedWheat]

BT Vision is awful. Depressing and misleading adverts, the sales people on the phone lie to get you to sign up, no lives channels beyond the standard Freeview stuff, poor image quality and even after paying your monthly subscription you still can't access most of their online content without paying extra. The sooner it goes away the better.

Re:This is more about BT Vision than bandwidth

[ZigiSamblak]

This is just BT believing that because they used to be the national phone service they have a right to dominate any communications market and charge whatever they like. We have a similar company in the Netherlands KPN who used to be the national telephone and post service but since they were privatized have shown a total disregard for fair competition from other companies and tried every trick in the book to hold their dominant position so they can abuse it to make bigger profits.

No doubt there are some influential contacts in the government who get paid well for these agreements. If you ask me the expense scandal in the UK is just the top of the iceberg and our governments are basically nearly as corrupt as the US, they just make more effort to hide it.

Re:This is more about BT Vision than bandwidth

[smoker2]

BT Vision is Freeview TV, with a hard drive. The part that needs broadband is minimal. Here are a list of "Features" :

• Pause rewind and record Live TV
  The Vision+ box is a digital TV recorder that lets you pause, record and rewind live TV.
• 160 GB hard drive
  Record and store up to 80 hours of Freeview TV with the huge 160 GB hard drive.
• # Dual tuners
  The Vision+ box's dual tuners can record one or two programmes at once while you watch another recording.
• Record whole TV series
  The TV guide shows scheduling 14 days in advance. Simply press the R button twice to record a whole series.
• HD Experience
  The HD Vision+ box gives you selected films and TV in crystal clear, High Definition picture and sound quality.
• # Convenient billing
  Any pay per view movies, sport, music or TV shows you watch will be added to your next BT Vision bill. If you take one of our Value Packs, you will be billed in advance each month.

Combined with bittorrent, I already have what they are offering. Except their speeds are derisory. I recently switched provider to Be, and experienced a doubling in download bandwidth, and a trebling in upload bandwidth, for 25% less per month including a fixed IP. Plus BT claimed that "it was not possible to get faster speeds on my line". Funny that, considering you need a BT phone line to sign up with Be. But now I'm not with BT broadband, I can't get BT Vision. So there was no net neutrality in this case. All their stuff was prioritised already.

Re:This is more about BT Vision than bandwidth

[kyz]

BT, the monopoly provider of telephone landlines in most of the UK, only have IPstream in their exchanges, which has a maximum speed of 8Mbps. Most broadband providers, including BT Broadband, are merely reselling this 8Mbps access.

Be, Virgin and TalkTalk took advantage of the OLO (other licensed operator) scheme that BT was forced by OFTEL/OFCOM to provide. They put their equipment in BT's exchanges. They can provide broadband speeds higher than 8Mbps.

However, in order get access to those other providers inside BT's exchanges, you need a BT line, even if you never use the BT line. Sure, it sucks to be you, but what's the alternative? Other operators would be forced to build and operate all their own cables and exchanges, rather than rent a corner of BT's exchange, and given they don't have access rights to the land like BT does, there are many places they wouldn't be able to go.

That's the tradeoff - you can get better-than-BT broadband almost anywhere in the country because you need a BT line.

Non-issue

[Brian Gordon]

This shouldn't be an issue at all; the BBC's ISP should be charging them a fortune for their high bandwidth use and then the squabble is between ISPs for peering costs. Also BT should be charging by the gigabyte instead of offering unrealistic "unlimited" packages that cause problems when people actually use their bandwidth.

Re:Non-issue

[JTL21]

Erm, the BBC don't have an ISP. They produce enough traffic in the UK that they peer directly with most UK ISPs at LINX.

BT's cost is only on its internal network, they won't be paying someone else for bandwidth.

BTs customers are paying for a connection speed e.g. 2Mbit and they should be able to get that rate from the BBC if they want. BT needs to change its customer charging infrastructure not bitch and whine

Re:Non-issue

[DrogMan]

You have a viable alternative - or rather about 130 of them, so get clued-up, ask BT retail for a MAC and migrate to another provider who can provide you with the service you want.

The BT Wholesale network is actually rather good. BT Retail is just one of 130 ISPs who use the BT wholesale network, and they're a particularly bad example.

It's vitally important to not confuse the two, and do not let BT tell you otherwise. I have BT copper to my home/office, I pay BT the minimum amount a month for this copper, but my Internet access is through the BT wholesale network, via another ISP, not BT.

WTF?

[AccUser]

Let me get this straight... the BBC pays for their internet connection, and they will have to pay a tariff appropriate to the bandwidth that they use in providing these services, which covers iPlayer video being delivered from their servers. As a consumer, I pay for my internet connection, and pay a tariff appropriate to the bandwidth that I use in consuming services, included iPlayer video that I download and stream. So if both ends are paid for, what is the problem?

It sounds to me like BT has suddenly realised that they have oversold their services on the basis that not everyone uses their internet connection at the same time. This is a classic telecommunications model. Except that, unlike the telephone, our internet access is largely un-metered (flat-rate charge), and we can use it even when we are not physically present.

Solution

[sakdoctor]

BBC shouldn't give a penny to BT. They should cut them off.

From the perspective of BTs dumb mass audience, who chose BT because it bundled the prettiest ADSL modem, the word will quickly spread that BT is pants because your can't get "teh TVs".
Problem solved.

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.

Competition

[jonbryce]

When people sign up for broadband, one of the main things they want it for in this country is iPlayer. If iPlayer doesn't work well on BT Internet, they will go to another ISP where it does work. That will be a selling point for their competitors. For that reason, BBC can tell them to get lost.

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.

Having worked with...

[OneSmartFellow]

..BT (not for them, mind you, just with them on technical projects), all I can say is that if BT (and OpenReach) would spend more on their hardware and infrastructure and less on their asinine marketing and the outsourcing of their customer support (which is a hugely inefficient operation), and all the other stupid crap that they spend money on, this would be a none-issue.

Hey, BT, you still have a freaking monopoly, despite the creation of OpenReach. If you can't make money with a monopoly, you deserve to go under.

Wrong Approach

[lobiusmoop]

Here's an independent UK ISP ratings site. BT is third-from-bottom for a reason.
  All the top ISP's on the list implement download quotas instead of throttling and port blocking to manage traffic, it is the fairest solution to load management IMHO.

Re:What do you expect?

[Keeper Of Keys]

1. Sign up users who don't use their connection much
2. Price War
3 ???
4. Loss

Re:Share the cake... or make the cake bigger

[Rogerborg]

Look, I'm going to type this really slowly so that you understand.

The choice quotes in this article are slighly misleading. The issue isn't the "cost" to BT of carrying the bits. That's as close to nil as makes no difference. The issue for BT is that they are running out of capacity to carry those bits, and will have to upgrade their infrastructure, as you note.

Heck, if Japan or Korea ISPs can provide very high bandwidth residential internet to their customers, why couldn't the UK?

Who. Pays. For. It?

Who pays the wages of the guys digging the holes? Who pays for the fiber that goes in them, and the switches and routers?

That's all BT are arguing over: whether they have to increase the cost to consumers directly, or whether they can tax the producers (who will then have to tax the consumers through the 'television' license fee).

The only issue here is who's going to look like the bad guys for making the populace pay for upgrading BT's infrastructure. BT would prefer that the BBC do the squeezing, that's all.

BT's Heavy User package

[Some Bitch]

BT have a Heavy User package (£20.54pcm) that contains the following as part of it's description...

Downloading 3,333 music files, 26 videos or streaming 40 hours of iPlayer every month

If you can't afford to provide it then don't advertise it, fuckwits. Manage your customer's expectations properly and stop making promises you can't keep, it's a much more sustainable business model.

Simple solution

[Roger W Moore]

This is just BT believing that because they used to be the national phone service they have a right to dominate any communications market and charge whatever they like.

There is a simple solution to this: the BBC should just ignore them. If they decide to limit or block access to iPlayer then I'm sure their competition will make mincemeat of them given its popularity. All they need to do is advertise that they have iPlayer access and let the market decide - this is one time that leaving things to the market might actually work.