Slashdot Mirror
Leaked Docs Show UK ISP BT Plans Music Service
An anonymous reader submits word of a leaked document that indicates that British Telecom "has plans to launch a new music download service which it hopes will steer users away from P2P file sharing . The introduction of the new service is aimed at giving its customers an alternative to file sharing and is already in the works with talks ongoing between the ISP and music labels such as Universal and EMI. When launched 'in the near future' the service is expected to offer BT's 5.5 million customers completely free music downloads for an initial period of 6-9 months after which an undecided monthly subscription fee will be charged for continued access to the service. The finer details of how the service will look and function is unknown at this stage, but will play a huge part in how successful (if at all) the service will be. Services like Spotify already exist and are hugely popular in the UK meaning BT will have to go the extra mile to convince users they have a service worth using."
Let's hope they don't simply find it easier to degrade the quality of competing services. I get nervous (and cynical) when my ISP wants to sell me anything other than a pipe for bits.
I'll queue up downloads 24/7 for the first six months, and that should probably take care of any music I, my family, and my friends wanted anyhow.
If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot immediately.
Hey, don't jump the gun. Just because BT hasn't blocked BitTorrent yet doesn't mean it isn't part of the plan.
Give them a chance to get their stuff together first. They've got a quarterly puppy-kicking quota to meet before they can worry about little details like shafting the customer.
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"UK ISP BT" is pretty unambiguous. The first acronym is known world wide, the second by everyone that uses /., and the third can be inferred by the first two.
Is "US ISP AT&T" also a problem? - but yeah, i'd have worded it differently.
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At least my ISP uses its money to try to ensure that they are never the bottleneck on the circuit, rather than subsidising someone's music downloads...
I have the "unlimited" package which means I get full download speeds most of the time, with "network management" in the evenings. In practice that means I can get a full 5MB from newsgroups all day (midnight to 5pm) and this slows to 2mb in the evening. I notice no slowdowns for things like Skype, gaming or iplayer. I managed to get 70gb of movies yesterday morning so not exactly worthless.
Usually, when sitting having a chat, and someone asks us the utterly boorish "my internet seems to be running slow"; One of the first pieces of advice we give to people to speed up their net is to ditch BT broadband. BT's infrastructure is old, poorly designed, and managed on the cheap. Their consumer grade equipment (Home Hub - Business Hub) uses poor quality electronics and software making it almost unusable. (I have yet to meet someone with a working set of "Hub Phones")
Their phone line instillation service is woeful. Younger engineers are poorly paid and badly trained - creating birds nests of redundant wiring inside their junction boxes, degrading an ADSL signal to the point dial-up seems a realistic alternative. Even an experienced engineer is given such a busy schedule they have no choice but to cut corners.
The poorly installed phone line and slow internet service is not what pushes customers over the edge - its the customer service. A phone call to BTs technical support regarding a cable fault will most probably (worked out mathematically from the many service calls I have endured) be routed through to billing - who will tell you that booking another engineer cannot be sent because there is something amiss with their system. They will tell you this without apology - in a tone of voice suggesting it is you'r fault their system does not work.
Of course... BT are always adding value to their products - BT vision for example. An innovative service where you pay BT to stream channels free on digital TV to a set top box (over your internet connection using bandwidth you pay for). Even their own websites suggests that you could get every channel available on free-view, 20Mb download bandwidth (less whatever BT vision uses), with unlimited usage, a Free BT-Vision set top box, and even a £25 Amazon gift certificate. All this for just 40 pounds per month! With an extra £10 per month line rental. And an instillation fee for the BT Vision Box.
Rant over - point is BT could, and most likely will, provide a music service, and most likely will employ traffic shaping. It most likeley be woeful when compared to the likes of spotify or any other current provider. Chances are if you use BT broadband your internet connection will be so poor you wont be able to notice traffic shaping. Only a lunatic would actually buy an internet based service from BT - when they can barely provide an internet service. They obviously have no interest in providing a good quality telephony product, or internet product. Eventually, these sorts of rants will be repeated on /. posted to an article explaining how BT went bankrupt.
I worked for BT too.. What were they good at? :)