The bandwidth wars are not only back, they’re escalating: BT (NYSE: BT) has told video streaming sites that they will have to contribute to the cost of upgrading its broadband networks if they want consumers to enjoy a good level of video quality in future. BT Retail MD John Petter says (via FT.com): “We can’t give the content providers a completely free ride and continue to give customers the [service] they want at the price they expect.” Petter wouldn’t say “how many millions” BT was losing to traffic overloads but did say “if it wasn’t a significant sum, we wouldn’t be focused on it”.
The BBC complained last week that BT’s practice of capping broadband speeds on its basic Option 1 broadband package at nights from “up to 8Mbps” to just 896 Kbps to cope with bandwidth pressure was stifling use of its watch-again iPlayer service. But BT is not in a mood to make special cases or to put these problems down to net neutrality — ahead of the release of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report expected next week, it wants assurances from content owners and government that it won’t have to shoulder the full financial burden of creating universal web access.
It’s frustrating for the Beeb, which has invested much in the iPlayer and in April added a 3.2 Mbps HD-quality video standard — all BT customers should technically be able to receive iplayer HD, but not with the the on-going bandwidth throttling. But as Petter says, it’s a “much bigger issue than the BBC iPlayer, it’s true of all forms of video content coming across the web. It’s becoming a more and more pressing issue”.
BT, along with Carphone Warehouse and Tiscali, warned back in 2007 that iPlayer could have a massive detrimental affect on broadband networks due to its sheer size. And in reality the iPlayer is now probably bigger than they thought: it gobbles through 12.5GB per second, or seven petabytes (7,000 terabytes) a month.
(Original photo: Vix B, Flickr, some rights reserved)
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