"Earlier this week BT hit out at the Beeb, claiming it was unfair that internet service providers had been shackled with huge bandwidth costs to help deliver iPlayer to its customers."

The answer is simple then BT, make sure you charge nothing to ISP's for traffic from the iPlayer, simple!

You sell downstream bandwidth to end users, it's up to them how they use it. It is nothing to do with the BBC if you don't sell bandwidth at a price to cover your costs, that would be your problem not that of the BBC, who pay for their own bandwidth onto the internet.

iPlayer downstream on average: 250kBps (2Mb) (High quality)

My downstream (as sold by BT) 8Mbps.

My maths is a little fuzzy... What was your problem again?

Oh, OVERSELLING. Well done.

"Some iPlayer users complained about the downtime on the Beeb’s forum."

Okay yeah I can see the point of the iPlayer, it can be handy to catch up one something if you've missed it (but then most of the stuff I watch now I have set to record on the PVR or I watch it when it's on) but I can hardly see that it's the end of the world.

In any case, they make the programmes available for a week, or in some cases for an entire series so it's not as if those desperate to use the iPlayer would be likely to miss their favourite programmes unless they left it until the last minute.

Rob

BT sell people bandwidth, when these people use said bandwidth they want paying again?

""Earlier this week BT hit out at the Beeb, claiming it was unfair that internet service providers had been shackled with huge bandwidth costs to help deliver iPlayer to its customers."

The answer is simple then BT, make sure you charge nothing to ISP's for traffic from the iPlayer, simple!"

It makes me wonder how many times bandwidth is paid for.

I download a file from BBC's website

The BBC pays data transfer costs to their ISP to have the file uploaded from their website, I pay data transfer costs to my ISP to download the file.

So, ISP's buy data transfer from BT, and re-sells it at profit to customers (in this case BBC and myself)...how are they losing money exactly?

"Earlier this week BT hit out at the Beeb, claiming it was unfair that internet service providers had been shackled with huge bandwidth costs to help deliver iPlayer to its customers."

If it weren't for people/organisations creating and providing access to content online, then there would be no Internet, and no ISP business. Perhaps the ISPs should be paying the BBC for the content it provides their customers.

"Earlier this week BT hit out at the Beeb, claiming it was unfair that internet service providers had been shackled with huge bandwidth costs to help deliver iPlayer to its customers."

Yes, fancy that. Who'd have thought that Internet Service Providers would actually have to provide an internet service for their paying customers. Just who do those ingrates think they are? Don't they realise how privileged they are just for giving their hard earned over to someone every month? how dare they expect something in return...

Wonder if its got anything to do with the BBC news website changes .... if you access this from a foreign IP address (even if you are in the UK but ISP/corporate WAN connects from gateway outside UK) it now directs you to the international version of the website (you used to be able to choose). This "service improvement" is to remove all the links to iPlayer/video stuff which they aren't allowed to show outside UK + to allow them to add adverts.

What does my monthly broadband subscription actually pay for then, if not for this very thing?

Why on Earth should the BBC pay anything to BT? It's the consumer who should pay, in higher costs.

It's sort of like asking for someone to pay for the petrol in my posties van, as well as the cost of the stamp on the letter being carried. Or not.

Whether it's telephone or broadband, BT are a total shower.

Not long ago I waited days for a BT "engineer" (who I wouldn't have trusted to change a light bulb) who then spent an hour trying desperately to talk himself out of 10 minutes work, which he eventually consented to do. All the time muttering darkly about being "here to fix phones, not **** internet." He blamed everything from energy-saving bulbs to my front doorbell for the failure of my BB connection (ethernet not wi-fi, and repeatedly tested and found to be in good order). Eventually found that the fault was at the exchange anyway - which BT had steadfastly denied that far.

Leaving aside the bone idleness and IT dyslexia of their employees, when will BT ever get it into their thick heads that, with multiple cellphones in most houses, a broadband connection is the only remaining reason most of us still have anything to do with them and their eternally problematic landlines.

I always thought signing up for BT's ISP meant Bandwidth Throttling ISP, have no idea it stood for British Telcom. I thought it was BT being honest and forward thinking - naming themselves 'Bandwidth Throttling', I learn something everyday.

There is no such service as unlimited, there is no such thing as free data - people, machines and leccy all needs to be paid for, and nobody is arguing against that.

Seeing as how my 3G contract with O2 claims to be 'unlimited' yet is capped to a poxy 400MB 'acceptable use policy', surely all the unlimited ADSL packages have AUP's as well - so either people are staying within their AUP's, or they're not.

If they're not, charge them for the overage, or move them to a package more suitable for them. If they are staying within their AUP's, what's the argument? Their usage by definition is 'acceptable'.

Well the ISPs just need to either set up mirrors of the BBC content or lay their own strands of wires to the BBC. Both things are comparatively cheap and can be implemented fairly quickly.

No you dont need a licence to view Iplayer as long as you are based in the UK, as its not live there is no restriction at the moment...

I thought it was reported a few months back, OK it may be even a year ago, that the BBC were looking at installing servers into exchanges to relieve the bandwidth issue.

Has this moved no closer or have they given up ?

Of course the detector vans are a load of shit. The Beeb just assume everyone has a TV, check who's payed, compare this with their database of addresses, and send threatening letters to anyone who doesn't show up in both.