UK internet providers want to charge BBC for internet TV

August 13, 2007 | Eric Eldon | Comments |

picture-26.pngInternet service providers in the United Kingdom are saying they may restrict customers’ access to the BBC’s iPlayer, the broadcaster’s new online television service, due to the higher cost of sending video over the web.

iPlayer, launched as a beta on July 27, lets you download BBC television programs from the last seven days for free.

UK service providers, such as BT and Tiscali, say the government-funded BBC should help pay for the costs directly.

ISPs in the UK, like their counterparts in the US, face increasing demands on their bandwidth capacity as more people watch television online.

Competing UK broadcasters, including ITV and Channel 4, have also launched internet television players. Startups including Joost, Babblegum and many others are trying to provide similar services on both sides of the Atlantic.

These ISPs are targeting the BBC because they think iPlayer will be the most popular internet television service in the UK, according to the Financial Times.

However, the ISPs are all also trying to figure out how to exploit demand created by these video services while offering competing services. Most large ISPs in both countries now have their own television services, according to a Jupiter Research blog — which makes their arguments appear self-interested:

So, these Internet-delivered TV offers both push up ISPs’ bandwidth and network costs, and they potentially undermine the ISPs’ own TV services. So ISPs vocally use the issue of higher costs, while ISPs are also concerned about revenue protection for their TV services.

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About the Author, Eric Eldon

Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.

  • British ISP should hire a PR firm before making statements like this. The PO will kill them
  • This concept of limited bandwidth is silly. These ISPs are simply old-tech telecom companies who are too lazy to source better and lower cost bandwidth.
  • will max
    After testing various TV software and visiting loads of sites. most of them offer a free trial or preview and then they make you pay to sign up, or are cluttered with ads. I think that is ridiculous... so ive done my research and have found a couple of really decent sites. The first one Id like to draw your attention to is (viewmy.tv) This site has almost 1300 channels from around the globe and counting. it is free to register and they dont ask for stupid details, just your username and email address. It actually streams live channels so you dont have to download any and they have a pretty easy way of finding the channel you want. You can search through genre, country, region or name of the channel. oh and there are no ads either. Check this one out. With over 1300 channels from hundreds of countries, loads of features like channel rating, user recommendations, live chat, profile pages and much much more.