This article highlights the recent discussions we have been having here, once again the ISP's are complaining of over utilisation of their networks (although helpfully a cost figure is shown to demonstrate the upgrade requirements), on the other side of the coin the BBC recently made a comment of shaming such ISP's who throttle or cap users of the BBC online video delivery service.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7336940.stmA row about who should pay for extra network costs incurred by the iPlayer has broken out between internet service providers (ISPs) and the BBC.
ISPs say the on-demand TV service is putting strain on their networks, which need to be upgraded to cope.
According to figures from regulator Ofcom it will cost ISPs in the region of £830m to pay for the extra capacity needed to allow for services like the iPlayer.
So-called traffic throttling has long been controversial and has been used by ISPs to control those users who eat up bandwidth by downloading huge amounts of material from often illegal file-sharing sites. But the BBC's iPlayer service has changed the nature of the problem.
"The iPlayer has come along and made downloading a legal and mass market activity," said Michael Phillips, from broadband comparison service broadbandchoices.co.uk.
He said he believed ISPs were partly to blame for the bandwidth problems they now face. We estimate that currently the iPlayer is having between 3-5% impact on the network
Ashley Highfield, BBC head of future media and technology commented,"They have priced themselves as cheaply as possible on the assumption that people were just going to use e-mail and do a bit of web surfing," he said.
ISPs needed to stop using the term 'unlimited' to describe their services and make it clear that if people wanted to watch hours of downloaded video content they would have to pay a higher tariff, he added.
It seems once again the same problem is waiting around the corner for most ISP companies, demand is outstripping supply and without major network upgrades of an order most ISP's find unpalatable we will see increased capping and throttling to allow some pretence of a normal service.
In the US its at this stage the Govt stepped in and helped out with some of the network upgrade costs, although mysteriously much of the earmarked cash was never to be seen again after being handed over to the ISP,s, perhaps this problem needs to be looked at again and all sides need to be clear and honest in whats needed to move forward in the most positive way, the alternative is of course more public animosity each time a new service is deployed and such events are becoming all the more common as we saw in the Comcast v Bittorrent reports of recent vintage.
