BBC vs ISPs: Bandwidth row escalates as Tiscali wades in

Outspoken broadband provider Tiscali has crossed swords with Ashley Highfield, the BBC's top technology executive, over calls he made for ISPs to lump the potentially devastating effect of the iPlayer on their business. Since the launch of the popular streaming service, the iPlayer is costing ISPs dear, with one reporting a …

[Mark]

Re: Avoiding the license fee

No, if you detune your TV, you don't have to pay the license. You will have to put up with threatening letters (unless my last threat to take them to court over their polaroid picture of a court summons being sent to me worked for others as well as me) and continuing threats even after you've told them.

Me, I tell them they can come in if they are willing to pay the access charge of £25. So far they haven't taken me up on the deal...

[James Dunmore]

Like Mobile phone contracts

Surely the solution is to charge like mobile phone contracts - you get x amount included a month, if you go over that, you get charged. So if someone wants to watch IPlayer day in day out, they get charged over the £8 a month (whatever), if another just checks email, they only pay X amount a month.

Simple.

Obviously, given current models, ISPs will have to restructure the pricing.

BBC can't be blamed for this (and I'm not a big fan of the BBC) - they just provide content. Sky + Channel 4 have on demand services, don't hear them being mentioned.

But surely, as the upload costs to BBC must be sky high, it'll be in their interest to push a p2p version, which will surely help ISPs, because surely some users in the same network will be viewing the same content, thus making less overall outwards/inwards bandwidth, etc.

[TrishaD]

@ Gabor

I see that irony is dead, then?

[Shabble]

What are ISPs for?

I currently pay Virgin Broadband to shuttle unlimited amounts of data from websites to my home and back again IRRESPECTIVE of what that data is or where it comes from. I pay Virgin TV to provide me with a strictly limited TV viewing package defined by an agreement between myself and Virgin as to how much I should pay for what content.

Now, if ISPs want to switch from the traditional ISP model to the cable TV model, then that's fine (or even preferable) – it’s a free country after all. However, I'm getting pretty sick of this ‘having ones cake and eat it’ attitude of the ISPs. The big ISPs have deliberately sold a service they know they cannot provide, which, in my mind, means they are conciously stealing from millions of UK customers. How they thought that no-one would notice I have no idea, but I suggest that they knew it wouldn't last and were just making as much money as they could whilst the government was turning a blind eye.

If one good thing has come out of this debacle, it is the huge demonstration of just how little forward planning our big technology companies actually do, and just how little respect they have for the typical customer. A small amount of actual industry regulation would have prevented this mess from happening. Well done New Labour - big government where it opresses the masses, little government where it increases the wealth of rich shareholders. Is this what Blair's Third Way really means?

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting what you pay for?!?

I wish people would stop leaving comments saying 'ISPS should give me what I pay for'

Most of the people who read here are involved in IT in some form and should have at least some basic understanding of what the issue's are:

BT's network dates back to the ark.. there is not enough capacity there to handle the demand - This is a *p2p service* .. It wont be going out over the "web" as such, it'll merely be passed between the UK ISP's and right back over BT again.. you know.. the network with capacity that just isnt there in places?

Secondly - Do you have any idea how much 1mbit/sec of sustained traffic on a bt central pipe costs? Evidently not - I'll give you a clue between £160-£300. Let's assume your isp pay £160 per mbit/sec per month. £160 * 8 = £1280 / Month.

So I for one support the ISP's here - The reason why the service is contended is so we can get high speed internet at a reasonable price.. who here has £1280 to shell out for their ADSL on a yearly basis.. let alone a month!!

For those of you who like analogys.. I dont see people pissing and moaning as much if there's a hosepipe ban.. also.. what do you think would happen if everyone decided to turn their taps on at the same time - Do you think you'd 'Get what you pay for' then? No.

If everyone connected to the same exchange picked up their landline's and tried to make a telephone call.. do you all think you'd get through? No.

If everyone in the same area on the same mobile network tried to make a phone call at the same time.. Do you think it would work? No.

So why is it ISP's that are taking the shit, for doing something nearly every utility provider in the UK does?

Mines the one with the clue bat.

[Leigh Smith]

Entanet

@Chris

I too would like to give props to Entanet and its resellers. You know exactly what you are paying for and you get a damn good service at a reasonable price.

@Tom

So what do you do on the internet that is so damn valuable it should not be hindered by other people having the nerve to use it? How dare they have different interests and priorities to you. Just who do they think they are? I bet you have problems with kids on your lawn too.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what is the cost?

Naive question alert...

If a fibre runs at 30%, %60 or %90 capacity, then who does it cost?

It's only a brighter than average beam of photons.

If it's saturated and requires another cable, then that would require more infrastructure, but once in place surely it should cost the bulk carrier the same to run at 10% or 100% capacity. How they charge downstream consumers for those photons is another thing...

ISPs should charge a realistic price to fund the services they aspire to offer, and be more proactive in helping their users and limiting the damage their zombies do.

Competing on rock bottom prices to provide nolimits free-for-all for criminally infested machines is grossly irresponsible. Perhaps the law should be strengthened to make sure that minimum best practices are adhered to, to greatly reduce cybercrime.

[Anonymous Coward]

license fee !

There was an initiative (looked at by the BBC and Government, well there are the same anyway) back in the late 90's to bring internet under the same license as Radio and TV. Hence owning a computer would mean you would need a TV license, not sure what percentage of the population does not have a TV, and legally does not have a license, but I imagine it is pretty small, but if people see this as a way not to pay their license fee, ditch their TV, and use a computer, I expect it again to be considered, if this is not already part of their master plan. Imagine what the equivalent of the TV detector van would be! They are watching you!

[Simon Ball]

@David Cornes

The only reason that we pay for traditional transmission via the license fee is because transmitters have no variable costs. Once the transmitter is built and operating, it doesn’t matter how many people (within range) are receiving a broadcast, the costs are exactly the same. That is not true of the internet. At present, costs are broadly a linear function of demand, and they are likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future (though hopefully those costs will fall).

Attempting to make iPlayer free (or even cheap) at the point of demand via a subsidy system would result in demand rising to levels way beyond what the BBC could support under any feasible license fee. It would be exactly the same damn stupid mistake that the ISPs themselves have made by selling “unlimited” bandwidth at a fixed price.

Direct charging the consumer for precisely what they have consumed is the only sensible way to price a product for which variable costs predominate.

[wibbilus maximus]

@all those saying tough shit to the ISPs

A lot of you seem to be stating that because the isps have sold an unlimited service that they now have to suffer. Well it's reality check time. NOT ONE OF YOU HAS AN UNLIMITED SERVICE. Every ISP has a fair usage policy so it's actually tough shit on customers. Basically you and the ISPs have agreed that you can have an unlimited service as long as you don't use too much of it.

There is SO many things wrong here that each company needs to be blamed for something.

ISPs: SHOULD NOT advertise unlimited service if it is limited. They should only provide customers with what they can actually sustain (faults on the network obviously is not included in that statement as that is not always something that can be controlled)

BBC: The iPlayer is a P2P sharing program in essence. Instead of streaming it realtime make it downloadable to a timelimited cache so that the bandwidth doesn't have to be used all at once (since most people will be trying to watch stuff during peak hours when they are home from work)

BT: The majority of ISPs in the UK resell the ADSL connection from BT who charge massive amounts for that connection. This means that the ISPs can only operate on a very small profit margin which is worked out on average usage.

All that is going to happen is that the prices for internet connections will rise which means all customers will end up paying more and the internet as a whole will get slower as lost of connections will be running at max capacity during peak times.

As a side note, as the BBC is funded solely from the licence fee/goverment taxes, why should you have to pay more for what you technically already pay for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Voting with my wallet

If ANY of my licence fee goes towards funding an ISP's network then I will quite simply stop watching TV and refuse to pay my TV licence. No if's no but's.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm likely to get burned here...

But I'm a Tiscali customer, and believe it or not I'm happy with them.

I have their £14.99 a month package for 2mbps broadband plus evening and weekend calls inclusive. And you know what? I'm happy with this.

They told me when I first signed up that the line couldn't support more than 2 meg, which knowing where my house is, age of house, where the exchange is etc is correct. So I have the 2meg package.

I watch the occasional YouTube video, keep both my Windows and Linux systems patched, etc. I do a fair amount of browsing but between all of this, 2 meg is more than enough.

So I'm paying for the service I receive and I receive a consistent 2 meg service from Tiscali. I have done for several months now since I moved here.

I agree that their business model may have to change but everyone seems to think that the model is flawed because everyone downloads movies, P2P, extended amounts of YouTube etc. I'm a geek and I don't, so perhaps the model isn't as flawed as it might be.

I was with BT before and that was a complete shambles. It took them a week to realise they had allocated 2 different phone numbers for the same physical line, and over a month to accept that they should be only charging once...

[Anonymous Coward]

@ all the ISP's out there - go fudge yaselfs

Seriously if ISP's want there cake and also eat it then they should just STFU.

1) BBC isn't goverment - only the Worldservice part is goverment - but thats moot anyhow.

2) Hmm like you pay ISP for service they advertise - they now try to blackmail us indirectly via content. We as UK peeps pay the BBC already along with pay the ISP.

Given those two facts I think the UK ISP's can go fudge themselves.

Either sort out your service and charge customers or dont. Oh thats right you dont dare charge customers more as they already think you provide a shite service so your trying to screw the customers by indirectly charging them more thru the BBC - seriously go fudge yaselfs.

But if UK isp's are happily bending over for the RIAA and that is after all extra work they should be paid from the music industry and then have a legit case of trying to screw a content provider were the customers have already technicaly paid twice for that content thru the ISP charges already and indeed TV lic, then frankly fudge em.

I look forward to how the goverment and indeed goverment petitions and your customers get there own back for your out of line hissy fits, seriously bad form.

[Simon Hickling]

They shouldn't be broadcasting

over the internet, they should be multicasting. I remember reading a comment (I think on Slashdot) by someone involved with a method of multicasting which packaged the data up in such a way that you never had to wait more than a few minutes for the video to start. Sounded very clever. Gives you time to get a cup of tea before you start watching. With a server caching popular packets at the exchange it could make a real difference.

Of course the internet is not geared up to mulitcast as the ISPs don't want to invest in the technology, just take the money and run without giving anything back. Multicast would be great for P2P as well :-)

I think Paris has been cast in multi films?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo, Freetards!

The only thing better than paying the least possible to enjoy music is paying the least possible to download it.

My theory is that the freetard hordes are really government borgs trolling to eliminate choice in the ISP market to one - the government owned one.

Go away, or get smart.

[Anonymous Coward]

Streaming Data

What are the ISP whinging for?

There has been streaming data for years....

Games like Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, World of Warcraft, etc all use streaming data.

There's also YouTube, Winamp TV, Channel 4, Sci Fi Channel and many radio stations that stream audio and video content...

So why are ISPs just picking on the BBC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the Customer make the decision

Let the ISP do the traffic shaping and blocking content. It is then up to the user to decide to stay with that ISP or find another ISP that does not block or restrict in the same way.

Dont get me wrong - If an ISP advertises a service then they should be able to offer that service. A 10GB cap is a 10GB cap - If I want to watch i-Player all day fine - but only to my cap.

If the ISP can not cope with the limits they set then the business model is wrong.

Internet usage is changing. ISP's need to catch up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Again.. People cant read?

The issue here is the BT *Central Pipe* - Not how much connectivity an ISP has to the net.

Lets put it in more simple terms.. the central pipe is what is used to connect *YOU* the home user.. to the ISP's network wherever they've planned to base it - Bandwidth on this is EXPENSIVE when compared to internet connectivity in the middle of docklands for example.

This is a p2p service.. all its essentially doing is passing traffic between isp's over the BT central network - Although BT are rubbing their hands together I can assure you ISP's are not.

[Rob Elliott]

Public money.

I wonder if the ISP's would be moaning if the BBC wasn't a publicly funded corporation. Of course they wouldn't... They sense easy money and an organisation that might give in.

Stick it to em BBC!

[Michael]

ISPs talking crap

It is very simple. I pay my ISP for internet access with an agreed level of service. If they don't meet that I get my money back and leave. I applaud the BBC for suggesting they indicate those ISPs which do not restrict access to content. Why should the BBC be blamed by the public for a crap service when it is the ISPs fault.

If people aren't happy with the ISP and want a better service then pay more somewhere else for it. The ISPs who offer a crappy service for minimal cost will still be able to do so, but they have the added advantage of being able to offer a premium product that gives better access to streamed data.

Oh wait, that crappy service is the premium service? Really?

[michael]

re: No-one's EVER gonna read this far down, but... I did

the bbc maby pay for transmitters but you pay for the recivers

tiscali are a isp for pepol reciving so it equivlent to the mony spent on your raido and your arial

[Simon Ball]

Addendum

That didn't read particularly well. What I meant to say is that the costs of transmitting TV depends only on the area you want to cover, and the number of channels you want to be able to transmit. How many people are watching, and how much they watch has no impact on costs at all.

By comparison, the cost of internet infrastructure is very much dependent on how much you expect consumers to use it. Even if the fibre has essentially infinite capacity, the equipment necessary to light it does not, and thus is a broadly variable cost of demand.

Perhaps more to the point, the cost of TV transmitter capacity is dirt cheap compared to internet capacity. It’s so cheap that they can afford to just waste 99.9% of it, and provide consumer choice not by responding to individual demand but simply by pumping out an enormous plethora of content all at once, and letting the consumer pick what he wants.

Bottom line, the cost models of conventional TV broadcast and IPTV aren’t even remotely comparable.

[Damien Jorgensen]

Fools

ISPs should charge more then.

If they are making razor thin profits and this pushes them over the edge, who cares? Its their own fault for offering free services

[mlp]

General consensus...

Well it seems here just about everyone is agreed - it's the ISPs problem.

When plus.net started bitching a couple of years ago that if you were using your connection excessively then you must be doing something illegal, people let it pass when the service they were paying for became throttled, subject to AUP and people got booted off. Other providers followed suit soon after when they realised they could get away with it.

Now people have a legitimate reason to use (lots of) bandwidth and the ISP's have to sort out their shit. Admittedly the problem lies with BT and their pricing model, as discussed in Andrew's Mailbox thread... So we find ourselves in the position of having to pay to watch the BBC (again - like the licence fee isn't enough), because the (heavily regulated) BT have artificially high pricing on their wholesale product/backhaul?

If your business model supports 1-2GB transfer a month (the figure quoted by plus.net as the average used at the time), then you make that the data allowance advertised/allowed in your rock-bottom-no-frills service. Tiscali don't seem to be able to support checking Hotmail at 6PM so I suspect their usage allowance is even lower. Right about now you'd expect the ASA to step in and stop people from advertising an "unlimited" product that quite clearly isn't...

Nevermind the fact that the BBC has the iPlayer and it's a bit popular, doesn't YouTube account for something like 10% of all Internet traffic? Will they go to Google and ask for a hand-out... not likely they'd get told to f*ck off in no uncertain terms! The BBC is just seen as an easy target.

Perhaps if Tiscali didn't spend so much on wanky ads and trying to buy market share they could spend some cash on actually providing the infrastructure they're over selling...

[system]

RE: Why should i pay?

"I for one have absolutely zero desire to watch tv, either streamed or transmitted. Why should I pay extra to finance the extra bandwidth?"

I for one have no desire to subsidise the habbits of idiots who actually believe they can buy an unlimited service for £6.50. I pay for a T.V license and for the bandwidth I use (for tiscali customers, a decent service costs at least 3 times what you pay). Why should I face ever increasing license fees to subsidise crappy ISPs I will never use?

The only way to avoid subsidising large bandwidth users is to do away with all business models similar to tiscalis. When I pay for 30GB peak traffic, I get 30GB peak traffic without subsidising those who use 200GB, and without being subsidised by those who only use 2GB.

[sharon morgan]

what a cheek

I think Tiscali are just annoyed that they are now being sussed by many more people and not just gamers, just how bad their networks are. They're getting annoyed that they now won't get away with shoving many many people in tight spaces. Shame on you Tiscali, trying to palm off your woes on other companies just because you're to lazy and to tight to clean up your networks and give decent people value for money for once instead of a cheap, nasty service.

Do us a favour Tiscali, sell up and leave us all alone. We don't want to have to deal with you or hear about you, after moving away from your shoddy internet.

[Wayland Sothcott]

Net Neutrality

I have been forming an opinion about this for some time. As an ISP I worry that my subscribers will blow my bandwidth on P2P and more recently on Video Streams. However I also remember what I am charging them for, simply fast access to the Internet and sort of unmetred bandwidth. Someone can have a very valuable Internet experience using less than 1GB per month or they can have a pretty useless experience and blow 20GB.

The reason the subscriber is paying for the Internet is to get their hands on what's out there in Internet land, not really for what I am doing for them. All those people provide all those websites that my subscribers want to look at and all I have to do is keep them online. So the fact that the BBC is providing even more for them to want means I should be happy that my service is now even more desirable.

OK so the reason that as an ISP I am worried is that I am not charging them extra money for the extra bandwidth. It's simple, charge a lot more for unlimited bandwidth and charge extra for gigabytes on metred services. Effectively if allow people 3GB they will probably never hit the limit. Plenty of people will use 10, 20, 40 70 GB every month but they need to pay more. I am sure that the high usage people only do so because it's free. If it cost them even a little more they would not bother.

You don't have to be the cheapest ISP, just have a price people can afford. If they can afford £10 per month but want something better then £20 is still fine. Then why not £25 or £35?

The only tricky bit here is why should the subscriber pay to view adverts.

[Steve Liddle]

BBC site has 502 (Service not available)

Tried to post a comment on their site, but seems they have run out of bandwidth for the day ?

BBC player seems an instant stream, often at peak times and no facility to upload later, only get to watch item for 7 days and only on BBC player.

Alternative clients and the like let me schedule when stuff downloads or uploads and can play films in videolan, ie full screen

Unfortunately a server error occured whilst trying to retrieve this page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/mt/mt-comments.cgi

We are currently working to correct this

[Jason]

It's 8pm...

And entanets' noc (http://noc.enta.net/) reads as follow;

Central 1 = Green

Expected performance 7.2Mbps

Central 2 = Green

Expected performance 7.2Mbps

Central 3 = Green

Expected performance 7.2Mbps

Central 4 = Green

Expected performance 7.2Mbps

Central 5 = Green

Expected performance 7.2Mbps

Central 6 = Green

Expected performance 7.2Mbps

The top news story is;

We have today ordered additional capacity for central 5, ETA is Friday 11-04-2008.

And my internet is fast as fook at this time. I pay more than most people, and I get a better service, I know exactly how much bandwidth I can use a month, and I can see exactly how much I have used so far. You get what you pay for.

[Anonymous Coward]

BBC Steamroller

Right, ISP's, pin your ears back and listen to the private sector who have already been screwed by Auntie. For decades now the Beeb have been riding roughshod over independent TV producers in the UK, and doing so using public money. F'rinstance, those cute ads for Tweenies et al adorning the side of buses? Which feed right into BBC Worldwide's coffers? Who pays? Answer - you do. because they are not promoting a 'brand' they are promoting a public service channel. That is millions of taxpayers money used to promote a private industry. The BBC is a pretty bent organisation when it comes down to it (oh, and the news is crap - compare the information bytes to something like Euronews and be depressed) and they are after YOUR business. Shut down iPlayer before it is too late - it's rubbish technology anyway.

[Tanuki]

I can think of no better use for my licence-fee..

I'd really like a chunk of my licence-fee to be put towards funding the rollout of true high-speed broadband across the UK.

Let's face it: the Beeb have to pay to run their broadcast transmitters; why should they expect to piggy-back on ISPs for free?

In the absence of licence-fee-derived funding perhaps ISPs could offer two levels of service.

One, a standard service which doesn't let you access the Beeb's questionable emissions.

Another - at extra cost - which gives you everything-plus-the-Beeb.

Then let the market decide.

[Simon Hickling]

@ Anonymous Coward

That's the technology I was trying to remember - the one that provides on demand over multicast. Looking on the IEEE site there seem to be a couple of techniques and quick Google suggests there are (or have been) a number of investigations into this. You don't seem to have picked up on my other point - no, there is currently no benefit from multicast due to network structure. What have my ISPs and BT been doing with the money I pay them every month? Not investing in infrastructure or planning a network structure that can cope. Given this weeks fines for water companies (another regulated industry) doing wrong by their customers, I just hope OFCOM will start to do some regulating.

[Cliff]

Anonymous Cowards

The fact that the biggest slice of the anti-Beeb rhetoric comes from Anonymous Cowards suggests to me they know they're very much in the minority opinion.

Me? I side with the beeb on this, whether or not there are pictures of the Tweenies on buses (which does seem somewhat irrelevant).

[Peter Williams]

I pay for web access not BBC programs

I have no interest in the BBC Iplayer, have tried it in beta and will probably not use it. All I want is fast web access and I pay £24.99 a month for it, if you want Iplayer the you or the BBC should pay for it. I would be very happy for my ISP to limit Iplayer to maintain my speed.

Peter

[Gulfie]

ISPs are not the only losers...

... the paying punter such as myself is also losing out. I have watched my available bandwidth strangled to below-dial-up speeds because, according to my ISP, there is lots of iPlayer traffic swamping the network in the evenings. I can't work, my kids can't do their homework and my wife can't prepare her lessons for school the following day.

Bandwidth throttling is not the answer. Neither is putting up the cost to the end user. An earlier Reg article referred to the problems with BT's commercial model and that is what needs fixing. iPlayer and similar services are not going to go away, they just emphasise the need for an uncrippled infrastructure to be built and, if BT won't adapt, somebody else will (hopefully) step in to provide proper Gb speeds to the local exchanges.

As usual in "rip off Britain" it is only when the incumbant's business model is trashed that anything happens. Time for OFCOM to get involved methinks.

Jacket because if I had the option I'd emigrate. I'm sick of being ripped off by big business and the Government "for my own good".

[Anonymous Coward]

Go BBC!!!

I'm firmly with the Beeb here as a previous Tiscali customer.

If you can't supply something as advertised, at the price that you are advertising it for then don't take up that market position.

Too many ISPs are taking the low cost position rather than billing for quality, clearly stating defined limits...we had the same problem with webhosts a few years back - everyone was unlimited but when push came to shove they could supply.

I'd rather know my limits, be able to work within them...and pay a fair price for my bandwidth at the time of usage.

The BBC should not have to interalise someone elses costs!

[Chad H.]

Hey, ISPs.

I pay for "All I can Eat", not "All you can eat thats economicly viable to provide", just "All I can eat". If you cant provide it... DONT SELL IT.

[Dave Bell]

Why did it have to be Tiscali?

They've never made a profit, their advertising is a blatant lie, and they won't even admit to the obvious "traffic shaping" that they're doing. If you only see their network at "peak time", it's crap.

They really don't have any credibility.

But Tiscali being a bunch of crooks and liars isn't sufficient to let the BBC off the hook.

[chris]

tight wads, uk traffic is cheaper than intercontinental traffic

These ISP's are complaining about bandwidth that originates and is transported within the UK. Yes it eats into their contended services, yes it'll raise the number of support calls and complaints from end users because of the crap iplayer performance, but it won't eat into their expensive intercontinental connections like youtube et al do. The local exchange to the home has been consistently recognised as the place that needs improving to deliver a superior broadband but none of the ISP's (not even cable) want to put their hand in their pockets to sort it out.

[rob forrester]

I heart BBC

I may sound like a total boy scout here but the BBC have offered an amazing service, they shaped the internet in the early days, their current web presence, in my opinion, is excellent, and i will use iplayer regularly.

As others have said, its interesting to see that they havent targeted the other big loads.I watch HD clips constantly on gametrailers.com and I have surfed youtube for hours on end, and granted the quality is lower, but it must be equivilent to one or two iplayer programs a night? Surely not many people are taking in more than an hour or two.

I think that this is sadly a case of "oh look they are doing well... lets get them!". thank god the BBC is standing up for themselves this time.

If they want to get something back from heavy traffic why doesnt tiscali just ask some of the porn merchants for a bit of cash?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because it's not a physical product...

I have PS3's for sale, just £150 each*

*While stocks last**

**OK, I only have 2 of them but I'll charge everyone who wants one £150 anyway!

[Anonymous Coward]

@tight wads, uk traffic is cheaper than intercontinental traffic

Everything in your title is correct... not.

except you.. like a few others has completly *missed the point*

1) its p2p traffic

2) its p2p traffic

3) did I mention - its p2p traffic :)

4) The local exchange to the home.. and from your local exchange to your isp is commonly recognised as being where the problem is.. the problem is THE COST OF THE BANDWIDTH TO GET THE CONTENT (over bt central) TO *YOU* Not to exchange it between each ISP or send it over to Asia for example.

5) If everyone pissed off to telehouse and watched iplayer there, the problem wouldn't exist.

6) If you really do believe 'uk traffic' is cheaper than 'intercontinental traffic' then do yourself a favour - go and price yourself up a 1 gig connection to linx (And the associated hardware, ripe membership).. and compare it to a 1 gig connection to cogent, hurricane electric (or many many other low end transit providers).. I'll give you a clue.. the one that gives you UK + intercontinental routes works out cheaper than the one which will give you 'uk traffic'.

Until you've been there.. done it.. got the associated tshirt and understand exactly what you are talking about.. you should not comment. :)

[Lance]

@Anonymous Coward

All content providers already pay. They do have connection(s) to the Internet and those are not free. So, you think the BBC (or anyone else) should pay that and then for the consumer as well? Then what is the consumer paying for? What you are asking for is that the ISP’s can get paid twice to provide the service? The content providers pay the cost for their pipe and the consumer and then the consumer pays as well.

[Paul Hampson]

@Nick Palmer

"The BBC, whose license fee is ALSO supposed to cover the provision of distribution methods"

The BBC is not responsible for distribution, only transmission, which is why they don't pay for the electricity we use for our TV sets.

The BBC is still incurring costs for transmission.

I only hope that someone from the BBC and the other TV company's see these comments and take heart. It may be that future services from other companies will be cancelled as a result of this "Outcry" by greedy, besuited ISPs.

Why is the register and the media in general not ridiculing the ISPs claims?

Why do they just brush over the near fraudulent representation of services by ISPs?

Why ,in short, are issues in the telecom sector always seen as a failure by civil servants like Ofcom and now the BBC.

Maybe, if the register (and similar media organizations) saved some of their bile for ISPs and BT we wouldn't be having this discussion .

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare you!

You want to actually transfer data using the internet connection you paid for? The very cheek of it!

You'll be wanting the data rate they advertised next!

[Matt]

maybe

the ISP's should just stop bulls--tting everyone and trash _all_ of their "unlimited bandwidth" deals.

Unless they charge realistic fees.

Bandwidth isn't cheap, it isn't unlimited, and the ISP's should take responsibilty and start putting together realistic packages.

[Mark]

re: laugable

"For example, youtube pay millions per day for their bandwidth...obviously tiscali et al don't provide it, because they don't have the infrastructure to host a banana"

But then again, youtube's millions of bandwidth cost isn't solely to tiscali customers: it's worldwide. And it's not even just £6.49 a month, either: it's £6.49 per month per customer. Which is easily enough millions per day.

Sure, youtube's money doesn't go to tiscali, but then again, for many people, if there were NO youtube service, they wouldn't need more than 1MB service and how much does THAT cost? So tiscali are getting money because services like youtube exist.

And do youtube get any of this?

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

iPlayer

You get what you pay for.

I am sure that my ISP costs me more than I would pay to use Tiscali but I have unlimited bandwidth and can speak to a real person if I need support.