TV on demand is a success for the BBC iPlayer, but ISPs believe they are being unfairly penalized, writes Julian Clover.
The importance of broadband internet to both the communications and entertainment sector has been underlined over the past few weeks for two very different reasons.
Last Friday Charles Dunstone, managing director of The Carphone Warehouse, was touring the TV studios to declare that his company would not disconnect customers that had been illegally downloading music files. It follows a campaign from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) to halt illegal filesharing. The BPI says both BT and Tiscali have indicated their approval for a scheme where the industry body would notify the firms of customers that had been making illegal downloads. Virgin Media was initially linked with the proposals, but later rowed back.
So if you’re into illegal downloads then Carphone Warehouse, which owns AOL in the UK, is the network for you. Dunstone is not in favour of illegal downloading, but says that it is none of his business what his customers do with the service once they have paid for it.
Tiscali cares very much, so much so that it believes that anyone who puts undue pressure on its network should pay for the upgrade costs. In its sights is the BBC, which is enjoying unprecedented success with its internet-delivered catch-up TV service the iPlayer.
“The BBC pay to distribute their broadcast signals, so I have some sympathy with Tiscali’s position, the danger is that this is a rocky road and that Google and Yahoo will be the next to have to pay,” Narrowstep founder Iolo Jones told me. Jones, who now runs consultancy TV Everywhere, says the real problem is the peering costs and the last mile cost if the exchange is unbundled.
Virgin Media is already engaged in talks with major content providers, pursuing the US model of ‘fast tracking’ certain sites that can then be used as a marketing tool to help upgrade customers to higher pricepoints. For all the talk of 50 Mbit/s the actual numbers of who takes what has not been revealed. What is known is that Virgin and others reduce the available bandwidth on the network at peak times to reduce pressure on the network.
“I’m on Virgin Media’s top service and this gets throttled regularly. Not surprisingly the ISPs want to sweat their assets and there’s little incentive to upgrade,” says Jones.
So if broadband subscribers find they are unable to watch or download the latest episode of Torchwood on the BBC iPlayer will they phone customer services to upgrade or just go and do something else? In the case of Virgin they might be able to watch the cable version of the iPlayer that will be given the soft launch treatment starting next month.
Tiscali hasn’t yet signed to a TV version of the iPlayer and its recent comments will make the negotiations all the more interesting.
