Originally Posted by Simes
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.
The ISPs have known this was coming for a long time. The issue of growth in popularity of streaming video has been on the radar for years, it's a bit late to start bleating when a hugely popular media provider decides to start offering it. The real problem is the cost of backbone-level bandwidth which has always been high. I used to work for PN and am more than aware they have often sailed close to the wind in how much bandwidth they provision to keep costs to the bare minimum. They are also one of many ISPs who have shot themselves in the foot by promises of unlimited downloads etc. in the past, competition for customers in the ISP market is fierce and most providers forego making a profit to grab new users.
I don't see how the BBC can be expected to foot the bill simply because they provide the content. The end user has a lot of options in how they receive that content, it's internet traffic. The internet providers are terrified of increasing their own prices to meet the cost as they will lose customers, they have consistently failed to market their services properly over the years as the desire to signup new users usually comes first at the expense of realistically priced products.
BTW the real world contention level for home users is much less than 50:1 (more like 20:1). Theoretically there's nothing to stop BT allowing the network to contend to that level but in practice it's unlikely to happen.