We may all love watching television and video on the Internet, but the technology allowing us to do so doesn’t come for free. Could we, the consumers, soon have to pay extra in order to watch Web television?
Web video is currently growing, both in quality and popularity, at a faster rate than broadband Internet speeds are increasing. This is creating a problem wherein ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are calling foul on providing the extra bandwidth necessary for these services.
Most ISPs already offer tiered services where the more money you pay, the higher speed and monthly download limits you get. But that may not be enough to offset the cost of delivering high quality video streams.
ISP Complaints
A debate arose early in 2007 when the BBC iPlayer launched and soon gained lots of users. British ISPs such as BT and Tiscali then suggested that the BBC should pay the ISPs to carry the extra traffic being created by the iPlayer.
Now, comments from Anthony Rose, BBC’s head of digital media technology and the man in charge of the iPlayer, has brought the debate back into the public domain once again.
iPlayer Premium?
According to ISP Review, in an interview with the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) Q4-2008 Technical Review, Rose seemed to suggest iPlayer users being charged a premium for using the service. He said:
“There is no problem with the amount of bandwidth as the iPlayer is no way near reaching the bandwidth limit. However, our audience statistics show that iPlayer usage peaks in the hours between 6 and 11 p.m., which is also peak traffic for ISPs.”
“The ISPs license the bandwidth for IP stream, based on peak usage. For this reason, iPlayer traffic is costing those ISPs. It is not just iPlayer, all traffic from YouTube, Facebook and other services is costing them. Our statistics indicate that this traffic is even larger than the iPlayer’s traffic.”
“For example, the user who enjoys higher bandwidth connections would pay more, and those who are satisfied with lower bandwidth connections would pay less. Of course, nobody should get a worse experience than today. We were offering streaming initially at 500 kbit/s. Today we are also offering 800 kbit/s and in three months time we might be offering 1.5 Mbit/s.”
Rose then suggests that to counter the ISPs increased costs for providing the iPlayer to its customers at peak times, the ISPs could charge them £10 for the privilege of the higher quality video.
Paying Twice
But there’s a huge problem with this plan that Rose seems to be ignoring. Which is that anyone using the iPlayer has already paid for the privilege by paying the overpriced BBC license fee in the first place.
Should people who simply want to sample BBC programs online that they’ve already paid for offline really be expected to pay twice? A £10 a month premium would work out at £120 a year, almost doubling what it costs to watch BBC programming.
Other Solutions
The BBC is thought to be working on other methods for lessening the burden on ISPs, and these caching systems should be applauded. But charging extra for a service already being funded from our pockets is a non-starter in my book.
