By Tom Espiner, 12 June 2009 08:23
NEWS
Internet service provider BT has admitted to throttling provision of the BBC iPlayer, and has called for content providers to shoulder some of the costs of content provision.
Last week BT was accused of limiting download speeds for iPlayer, the BBC video content player. On Thursday a BT spokesman admitted to silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK that it had been throttling iPlayer and other video-streaming content on its basic customer package.
The spokesperson said: "We throttle video traffic to 896Kbps for our Option 1 customers, between 5pm and midnight."
The spokesperson added that content publishers such as the BBC should not get a "free ride", especially in the light of a government report expected to recommend broadband for all UK citizens, due next Tuesday.
"Next week Lord Carter will present the Digital Britain report," said the spokesperson. "What everyone wants is high speeds, low prices, 2MB connections. We don't think it's realistic for content owners like the BBC and others to continue to get a free ride."
The spokesperson said the burden of cost for high-bandwidth connections should be shared between content producers and providers. The spokesperson was unaware of whether BT had approached Google, the internet giant that owns YouTube. ZDNet UK understands that YouTube accounts for 30 per cent of broadband traffic at peak times.
"Traffic is growing," said the spokesperson. "The idea that ISPs will continue to pick up the bill is unsustainable. We want to work this out with the BBC and other content owners to come to some real-world compromise."
The spokesperson said that BT could not pass the costs onto customers, as that would make the business uncompetitive.
"Prices are heavily constricted by competition," said the spokesperson. "Part of Digital Britain is low prices so people aren't locked out. That BT would not charge a lot more for broadband is dictated by the realities of the market."
All ISPs are not in the same market situation, the spokesperson added.
The BBC said in a statement that the amount of bandwidth iPlayer consumed was a "small percentage" of the UK total.
"Despite its popularity, the BBC iPlayer is just one of the many services on the open internet and only makes up a small percentage of total internet traffic in the UK," said the BBC statement.
During peak hours, iPlayer pushes out 12GB of data every second, and seven petabytes of data per month. BBC iPlayer total broadband usage is approximately seven per cent. However, the BBC already pays content-delivery networks a small amount of money to put its content online, ZDNet UK understands.
Comments
There are 15 comments. Join the discussion
1. Mark
I don't really understand the pricing problem.
Surely the market will evolve so that those that are willing to pay for high bandwidth/low latency/etc... can; and those that only want a basic connection can pay a lower price.
The ISP's just need to recoup any costs appropriatly from their customers.
2. anonymous
I bet they don't throttle traffic for BT Vision IPTV customers downloading VOD content !!!
Come on BT, play fair.
3. Richard Davies
ISP's are already being paid. If there networks fail to handle the traffic due to rubbish capacity planning etc. then they should either reduce the number of subscribers they have or increase the capacity of their network at their own cost. If other ISP's are piggy bagging BT's network then they will be paying for the priviledge to do so.
I presume that the BBC have a contract with a service provider and that they pay a fee already that covers their upload / download requirements etc.
I then have a contract with my ISP. This gives me 8Mb with a cap per month on the amount of data I can download (this is governed by my tariff). If I exceed my usage then I pay for the extra.
So with this in mind...the ISP's are already getting paid. They should shut up complaining. If anything we should be complaining...our networks are so far behind certain other countries its embarassing. This is probably because ISP's have been happy to pocket cash in the past without looking to the future. This is their problem (and now ours).
They should maybe stop using valuable bandwidth for things that people don't want and instead put it to things that customers do want like iPlayer.
I notice they don't advertise this on their website...maybe they should be made to so that when potential customers are comparing ISP's they can tell who is going to give them the full bandwidth and who will simply just charge them for it but never deliver it.
4. Guy Reynolds
Unfortunatly a good many ISPs have under priced, oversold and under invested in their services to the consumer using pricing models based on simple webpage access, and continue to do so.
With content providers such as the BBC giving streamed content that people want the ISP are being exposed of their oversold bandwidth and underinvested infrastructure. But rather than coming clean they are screwing the customer even further by throttling their bandwidth so that what was sold as upto 8Mbps becomes an 800kbps service, and wanting the content providers to compensate them for their own greed/folly.
5. Anthony
This is absolutly ridiculous. What people download is entirely upto them, you don't sign up with an ISP with an agreement that you won't log onto certain sites or stream certain data, assuming it's legal of course. If your within your Fair Usage Policy your within your rights to have uninterrupted service. Of course BT haven't approached YouTube, they know they wouldn't stand a chance getting anything out of them, as if a website is going to pay ISP's to let customers view their content. Additionally, if the BBC shelled out, they would effectively be paying for their bandwidth twice over. Traffic isn't even a tangible product, it's only worth as much as people can charge for it.
6. Simon
Ah, the old "bite from two cherries" money grab.
The traditional model is quite simple :
"suppliers" pay for their connection to supply the data.
"consumers" pay for their connection to receive the data.
In between, the big networks make their money by charging both parties for connections to their networks.
What BT are saying is "we aren't charging our customers enough, so we want a bite of someone else's cherry as well".
As I understand it, BBC have done all they reasonably can to pay "their end" - whether by buying bandwidth, or paying ISPs to co-lo their servers in the ISPs infrastructure.
So ISPs, stop the marketing crap - say what you are selling, give a legally binding minimum rate (actual throughput, not modem sync speed) for every connection, and then people who want to watch lots of videos will have the information available to pay you more for a better connection.
But as long as you sell something that's as badly described as current products (mostly) are, then you have no grounds to complain about customers using what they think they have bought.
7. Matt H
"What everyone wants is high speeds, low prices, 2MB connections" Erm, no, I want exactly what the Koreans and Japanese get please. 100Gb to the home at an affordable price. Seeing as I currently pay £25 for 10Mb (Virgin size L), but actually only ever get half that, 6Mb if I'm lucky, I don't think it's too much to ask that I get what I'm paying for! If the likes of BT and Virgin stop chasing profit margins, and start to deliver what customers want, then they'll have my ear, otherwise, quite complaining!
8. anonymous
Struggling to understand all this. Surely the main isp are peering with bbc meaning the cost to them is infrastructure.
This sounds more like isp trying to make a quick buck. (no shock there then)
9. Steven
Regarding the comment about BT Vision. These customers are not on Option 1 which is the lowest cost BT option. The story only referred to restrictions for Option 1 customers. If they want more then they should pay for more by choosing a more expensive option. I dont want to subsidise everyone else by paying more
10. karen challinor
I believe these comments support what I stated previously, basically
A - ISP's are charging as much as they can get away with for as little as they can get away with and have no incentive to improve the service they offer
B - services like IPTV will not take off in this country even if the demand is there until there is a major backbone upgrade to support the increased bandwidth requirements, after all there's little point paying for a 50Mb/s uncapped line that drops down to < 1Mb/s due to contention once the traffic hits the exchange
11. anonymous
Typical BT - they will have made some assumptions based on variables over which they have no control and are now paying the price.
The client pays an amount to BT for xMb bandwidth and the host (BBC iPlayer) will be paying their own ISP for xGb bandwidth..
How the client decides to use their xMb (usually highly contended) should be entirely irrelevant but BT were clearly hoping that on average, actual usage would be far lower than is the reality.
Sorry BT - you're 10 years out of date as usual.
12. David
I hardly think BT's claims against iPlayer bandwidth use is a drop in the ocean compared with what Google's bandwidth requirements are.
13. Ollie Clark
Charge people for the bandwidth they use. Simple.
If it weren't for content providers, there wouldn't be a business at all for ISPs. If anything, they should be paying the BBC, not the other way around.
14. anonymous
why should I be asked to pay any more I pay my TV Licence and I pay my ISP, I agree with other comments it should be down to the ISP's to pay any extra costs
15. anonymous
BT customers already pick up the bill for content delivery and not BT so what possible excuse have they to sting the content providers as well as customers