I'm very much with the ISP's on this one...
Yes they have shot themselves in the foot with the 8Mb and unlimited marketing guff, but iplayer could easily put them out of business.
If the Beeb refuses to help they have 2 choices
1) buy more capacity to support the increased demand for streaming however their margins are small at the moment as BT takes huge portions of their income for IPstream charges.
2) don't buy capacity and as their network fills suffering customers will leave and o to an ISP whi has done 1 until that fills...
so the ISP's loose and we loose. Interestingly if this grows the BT IPstream network will not cope as based on contention ratios of 50:1 for each "up to 8 Mb" channel to the ISP we see 40Kb/sec as a theoretical max if we all use it and you ain't streaming video at that rate.
There is a really good blog on this by plusnet
Will BBC iPlayer usage break the Internet? - The bandwidth timebomb! | Community Site News
It's also worth reading the post on how ISP's are charged:
How UK ISPs are charged for broadband - the cost of IPStream | Community Site News
My ISP and one with a sustainable business model - and as a user I believe in paying for what I get as I want what I get to be the same what I get tomorrow...
SImes.