The BBC's Technology Correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, has published extracts (BLOG) from an email the broadcaster received from broadband ISP BT. It quotes the provider as warning that content owners "can't expect to continue to get a free ride". In essence, BT expects content developers to help contribute to the costs of its broadband service.


BT claims that this is a new position, yet 2008 and 2007 saw more than a few column inches being devoted to similar calls from Tiscali , BT and Virgin Media . It's perhaps no coincidence that the calls come just one week after the BBC complained that BT's broadband service was restricting traffic to iPlayer and thus lowering the services video quality or causing it not to function at all (original news).


That situation reminded us of another 2008 news story we wrote (here), in which the BBC said it was introducing tiered video quality streams (based on your connection speed). The reason for this was to ease the burden on ISPs by allowing iPlayer to function at slower speeds, thus the ISP could lower its performance to the BBC without stopping the service. It’s perhaps curious that the BBC should then moan at BT when the method is used.

Certainly iPlayer traffic is a burden and the BBC's Controller for Vision and Online Media, Anthony Rose, last year estimated that "about 7% of peak UK Internet usage is due to the iPlayer. So, the iPlayer service is only a small fraction of the overall traffic and will certainly not cause internet failure." To be fair, 7% of traffic for any one specific service is still a lot. Ironically the BBC then went on to suggest that ISPs could charge more for viewing higher quality streams.

This then brings us back to today, where BT is once again calling on the BBC, and perhaps content developers as a whole, to help pay for the delivery of its service. However, content is what makes the Internet and for any ISP to suggest that the creators of this should pay is patently absurd. The costs of bandwidth may not always be cheap but it is ultimately the consumer that has to pay for what they use; just like your gas, water or electricity supply.

It's not that we don't mind somebody offering to help pay for the bandwidth we all use but that doesn't make it right. The problem here is, once again, with a highly competitive broadband market where every big ISP is scrambling to under-cut the other with lower pricing. Sometimes these ISPs can forget that you have to be realistic about what you charge.