14 Aug 2007

Broadband and the BBC

Posted by Tom M

TV RemoteWell, here we go… it was only a mat­ter of time really before the UK’s Inter­net Ser­vice Pro­viders (ISPs) got all het up over the BBC’s new, legal, peer-to-peer video down­load service.

It seems that ISPs are object­ing to the amounts of data this ser­vice will require, and that they’ll have to provide the peak-capacity that their cus­tom­ers have been pay­ing for. Now, if I’m pay­ing for a 4, 8 or 20Mb/sec broad­band ser­vice, I expect to be able to use ser­vices which are going to use that speed to deliver con­tent quickly enough to play “stream­ing”. Of course, I know about such terms as “user con­ten­tion” — and that home broad­band is provided on a shared-bandwidth prin­ciple — ISP’s don’t actu­ally buy enough band­width to give every user the full band­width they’re pay­ing for all the time. If they did, broad­band would be far more expens­ive, ISP’s work on the basis that not every­one who has (say) a 2Mb/sec con­nec­tion on a par­tic­u­lar exchange/head will use all that capa­city con­tinu­ously. The BBC player how­ever will likely increase the amount of band­width they need to provide the ser­vice the cus­tomer is pay­ing for.

Vir­gin Media (the ISP I cur­rently use, not through choice, but because I live too far from the exchange for ADSL to be worth buy­ing into) have “peak time, fair use” caps, so if you down­load too much between 4pm and mid­night, you can expect your speed to drop. They sug­gest if you want to down­load large files that you sched­ule them to down­load off-peak (for example, in the early hours of the morn­ing). While this is fine for Linux ISO Install­a­tion images, it is unfor­tu­nately not so appro­praite for stream­ing video, as those “peak times” are exactly the times when people are likely to want to use the iPlayer…

Now, I know other TV sta­tions in the UK have had their play­ers on-stream for a while, but I sus­pect the BBC’s will garner quite a bit more interest from the pub­lic… being free and all…

(full story on Wired)

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3 Responses to “Broadband and the BBC”

  1. I’ve been hav­ing huge argu­ments with people on ADSLGuide (aka Think­Broad­band)! I’m in a rather neg­lected area with regard to broad­band, can only get 512K and that’s flaky, and there is noth­ing going to be done about these sort of areas. BT and the LLU oper­at­ors are cherry-picking big towns and cit­ies in Eng­land for upgrad­ing broad­band facil­it­ies. Call me a social­ist, but I think tele­coms infra­struc­ture should be pub­licly fun­ded not left to the whims of private oper­at­ors who of course will only go for big profits! I said about 2 years ago on those for­ums that BT’s ADSL rol­lout was too little too late, but I just got rebuked for not bow­ing down to BT because they achieved the fast­est and most wide­spread rol­lout in Eureope. Shame that it was also the cheapest, worst and was obsol­ete before it had been com­pleted. Now, the same people are say­ing it’s right for areas with poor lines to be ignored while the private oper­at­ors cherry-pick the decent areas, that’s how privat­isa­tion works and it’s right and proper and we wouldn’t have what we have now if it was pub­licly fun­ded. Hrrrmph!

    Any­way, ISPs are not totally to blame — BT Wholesale’s pri­cing model for ADSL ser­vices is weighted against their cus­tom­ers, i.e. ISPs. BT Whole­sale of course want to make as much money as pos­sible so they shield them­selves from com­pet­i­tion and demand. So when there is more demand, as now, it’s the ISPs that have to bear the cost even though it’s BT’s infra­struc­ture that can’t handle it.

    ISPs do advert­ise an “up to” ser­vice and I sup­pose you’re right in that you should get what you pay for, how­ever the UK pub­lic are also to blame in always going for the cheapest option. If the mar­ket wasn’t so price-obsessed, we prob­ably wouldn’t be cre­at­ing so many prob­lems for ourselves. Band­width *does* cost money, somebody’s got to pay for it.

     

    Chris S.

    August 14th, 2007 at 10:44 ampermalink

  2.  

    Tom M

    August 14th, 2007 at 10:50 ampermalink

  3. “Part of this is how ISPs are struc­tur­ing their advert­ising and pri­cing. This needs to change.”

    Yep — VM and LLU com­pan­ies etc need to sort out their own net­works and change their pri­cing and product struc­ture etc, how­ever ADSL ISPs are stuck with BT Whole­sale and they will find it extremely dif­fi­cult to offer this sort of flex­ible struc­ture due to the way BTw sell the ser­vice. In that respect, it’s BTw that needs to restruc­ture, not the ISPs.

     

    Chris S.

    August 14th, 2007 at 11:12 ampermalink