http://www.uswitch.com/Broadband/Customer-Satisfaction.html

Seems they swept up at the uSwitch awards too!

Down in the comments of this thread, they estimate the bandwidth to a human as 4mbps per person. So that defines the upper limit of any bandwidth required:

http://www.nyquistcapital.com/2007/05/17/ftth-in-france/

So it's not like bandwidth will increase forever, however their costs will continue to drop. So they've got no reason to be miserable (certainly no reason to sell out their customers surfing data).

Surely it'll be possible for some ISPs to include music and some to not include it and charge a lower price - and those that don't can use the Japanese three strikes system to boot off anyone who tries to get away without paying. Everybody's happy.

I say 'surely' because I really don't know - it all sounds a little bit desperate. One problem is that if ISPs take on the role of radios in that way, they take on the responsibility of compensating the record companies and become more than 'just a carrier'. This goes against the 'just carry my data' philosophy that we're using to oppose Phorm.

Seems like a match made in heaven...

was this not the bissness modle that saved raiod music early on in it's inception?

"What so a reason for an increase in price of my broadband subscription will be because I probably will be downloading new Leona Lewis tunez from some service?"

I would be happy to pay a LITTLE bit extra on my bb subscription to make the music indstry SHUT THE HELL UP

"I would be happy to pay a LITTLE bit extra on my bb subscription to make the music indstry SHUT THE HELL UP"

Me too. While we're at it how much to get the film industry to stop bloody whining? And if we throw a little something in the games industry's direction is it at all possible that at very least they might stop denying distribution of games they produced in the 70's, 80's and 90's?

"i'd bet the goat porn producers would come out ....on top"

that is the most disturbing image I have imagened in the past hour

I so wish I could pay some extra flat rate i.e. 10-20 eur extra/month and get to pick what tech and what source I want to get my digital media...

That price should more or less cover the few bits I grab online that aren't 100% legaly available...

Will this be RIAA approved artists only, or will Priscilla Hernandez get her share of my connection fee when I browse to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpBi9tIjoFg - I want to know.

Did I read that right? I'm more than happy to pay £24.99 a month. What I'm not willing to pay £24.99 a month for is a service that's heavily capped, where the ISP decides what data gets priority and what doesn't. Who is the ISP to say that a download of a Linux ISO for an important task is less important than some teacher gossiping about how they kissed some other kid at school via Skype?

If there's a problem with people paying less the ISPs only have themselves to blame constantly undercutting each other to silly levels and that's exactly what they've done to the point they can't afford to provide the service they're offering at the cost they're offering it for.

In chasing more customers they've screwed over their long term customers so that essentially those of us that always have paid around £24.99 a month are subsidising people who pay anything less than £10 a month now. I'm not totally against ensuring the net is affordable, but only if it doesn't impact existing net users which it really is. Even then internet access now is cheaper than a TV license, gas, water, Sky/Cable TV, most mobile phone services per year so I'm not convinced the internet would be too expensive for most to afford if it went back over the £10, preferably £15 or £20 mark.

"Did I read that right? I'm more than happy to pay £24.99 a month. What I'm not willing to pay £24.99 a month for is a service that's heavily capped, where the ISP decides what data gets priority and what doesn't. Who is the ISP to say that a download of a Linux ISO for an important task is less important than some teacher gossiping about how they kissed some other kid at school via Skype?"

I have pluged them b4 and I will plug then again this is my current isp

http://www.keconnect.co.uk/index.cfm?page=526

pricy but good

> What so a reason for an increase in price of my broadband subscription will be because I probably will* be downloading...

Nah, I think it's the idea that folk will pay £x/month for all you can eat music downloads atop their connection fee.

Although this "all you can eat" is always cited as though it doesn't exist. AFAICT it does and afaicr the articles positing it have never addressed why, for example, itunes is bigger than the existing all you can eat services, if folk both want and would prefer it?

To me it seems arguable that people will keep paying for add-on services.

Sky / BT / Virgin Media and so on tend to have 3 or 4 different services, telephone / internet / TV and mobile bundled together already.

I'd say there's a limit to the number of different things you can keep adding and still getting punters to pay.

On paper, it might look like many V+ owners, for example, must pay for an £85 VIP package, but in reality I bet far more pay less than the advertised prices not the least because of the publicised Sky one loss [because you can phone and negotiate a discount]

Virgin media's "Broadband extras", free on some of their packages, currently gives access to "sonic selector" and you get £2.55 worth of credit each month [which at 1p a track to stream is 255 tracks] They also offer a discount on Napster [which I haven't taken]

That streaming just about covers my musical listening per month, despite Feargal's claims of an "insatiable demand"....although there are a few bits and pieces [zappa, zeppelin amongst others] that aren't on the service. But, as neither of those are producing new material, a per month service offering them wouldn't have much mileage.

Plus, on the same package, I've a load of music channels I can watch on TV and it pipes digital radio into my house too. They also have on demand music videos, which, again on some packages, Virgin has, are free as well.

On top of all that....there are the various concerts and shows that are on the "main" TV channels. On my V+ box I've got [or had at one time] The Diana concert, The save the planet one or whatever it was called. Glastonbury, Download at Donnington and the Isle of Wight festival. An old Led Zeppelin in concert and the song remains the same and Robert Plant solo gig [obviously shown because of the O2 fuss] Paolo Nutini, 3 tracks from Muse's HAARP at Wembley, a John Lee Hooker gig and various bits and pieces from Kerrang. The Leed's piano festival and an R.E.M concert in Dublin. Then there's the electric proms, the real proms, Amy Winehouse gigs and the BBC sessions stuff, Jools Holland's show..and so on.

Not a huge shortage of music to listen to, or concerts to watch.

Admittedly, despite all that, it doesn't completely cover the genres and artists I like [Muse and WInehouse I will see, stuff like Zappa and Beefheart you won't] and obviously on some of those services you can't choose the pieces of music you listen to and no doubt others would cite the same.

But, to me, it makes this idea that music downloads are making people not pay for music a little bit difficult to buy, because there is so much "free" broadcast music around why am I going to pay extra? Years ago I bought albums/cds the day they came out and queued up for tickets to get as close as possible to the front, and even bought the T-Shirt.

But today I can sate my appetite for music, perfectly legally, for next to nothing...or at best for a few quid a year. e.g I've seen and heard Amy Winehouse singing various hits and songs for nothing, without breaking a single copyright. Enough for me to know she has a great voice...but I'm not going to buy every album, go to every gig, read every newspaper story...those fans are doing that anyway...the rest of us, even if we like her music, just simply don't have the kind of 24/7 approach to it that the music industry hopes we will.

As a [useless] musician [equally bad on piano and guitar] I probably spend more time trying to play, than I do listening to professional recordings.

I can see a niche market, mainly but not entirely youngsters, who'll pay for music [for something that none of the above I've described can provide]...but it's not Feargal's insatiable demand. After all, Coronation Street has viewers that even the world's most popular musicians can only dream about getting [and even TV viewing figures are struggling against the wide variety of alternatives]

No, like gaming it's more niche and the casual gamer equiv [who is currently making Nintendo and so on rich] already gets free music in various ways, as described [and probably a few "illegally" from downloads too no doubt], but why are they going to pay for more?