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A storm has broken out with an unofficial group of ISPs, led by Tiscali, BT
and the Carphone Warehouse raising strong concerns over the BBC iPlayer.
The group are calling for the BBC to help with the costs involved due to the
increased bandwidth which the service needs. The iPlayer delivers content by p2p
and the expected half a million users could potentially mean bandwidth problems
for UK broadband customers claim the group.
"The internet was not set up with a view to distributing video.
We have been improving our capacity, but the bandwidth we have is
not infinite,"
"If the iPlayer really takes off, consumers accessing the internet
will get very slow service and will call their ISPs to complain."
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| Mary Turner chief executive Tiscali UK |
They even claim that if their demands are not met then they might even
implement traffic shaping, which is a way of limiting bandwidth which customers
can use and effectivly limiting the number of users who can access the iPlayer
at one time.
As most people with some internet knowledge will realize, their claims are
utter rubbish. Peer-to-peer applications, newsgroups and just sites such as
YouTube all use plenty of bandwidth and the iPlayer isn't going to be the major
bandwidth user they claim.
And the sceptical amongst us may point to the fact that all Tiscali, BT and
the Carphone Warehouse all have a TV service which will have to compete with the
iPlayer, and it seems that the ISPs are running worried. EDIT: BT have denied that they are part of the group against the
iPlayer and they are only concerned with the fact it runs in the
background.
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