BT asks BBC to cough up cash for iPlayer

5. Odd request for BT considering BBC is already paying them. Consider this simple example:

I'm a content providor with a 100Mb (BT provided) intenet pipe. I pay X pounds per year. My content is viewed over this (paid for) Internet pipe. Even if my content is over subsribed (e.g. link 100% full all of the time) I can only provide (and consume) as much bandwidth as I have paid for. Equally, my customers also pay for their local broadband connetions and cannot consume anymore bandwidth than they have paid for.

Issue is not the (paid for) Access/last mile but BT's capacity issues on their backbone.

4. The thing is improving service is done by lowering service for someone else.

4 months ago I lost faith in BT's workmen, doing road narrowing the council lowered the curb and sliced through a trunk cable that was running only a couple of inchs below the pavement, it took BT 4 weeks with 3!! Vans and work crews there every day to repair it, it then took them another 2 months to fill in the hole after they had finished.

3. I agree with the other comments here but I'm afraid I partly disagree. It all depends on the actual volume of traffic we are talking here. I think a relationship between BT and BBC makes sense, considering the iPlayer is currently very busy, and it's only going to grow in popularity as we gradually move away from traditional broadcast methods. A relationship between BT and BBC would mean that VoD traffic could be prioritised, allowing the quality to improve, giving users a better experience, driving usage and sharing a slice of the pie. When you consider the picture in the frame here it makes sense because that way everyone gets a slice. However, I also agree that it could potentially be a neutrality killer. I don't think BT should have that kind of power to block users or reduce bandwidth to any website, but improving the quality of service is a good thing for consumers, perhaps more so in this instance than others. Next item on the agenda - BT should provide us all with a fibre optic local loop. Discuss.

2. It works like this, BBC is a content provider, they pay to create the content, store it on their servers and to transfer it to BT's ISP on demand by users. BT is a content transporter, they take the data from their connection to BT and deliver it to your home paying the costs of transport.

Your subscription to BT's service means they are responsible of transporting anything you want to you no matter where from or how much within their terms of service, i.e. their fair usage policy and service caps.

BT has realised an awful lot of their traffic comes from the BBC so their trying to squeeze the BBC to pay their own costs by threatening to cut off or throttle their customers.

What BT is doing is breaking one of the fundamental backbones of the WWW, the concept of net neutrality, that is that The transport whatever the data is for the same cost and at the same speed and not try to charge different fees for different sites. When that changes that neutrality is lost and ISPs can start forming exclusive deals or forcing content providers to pay them a premium for a better (non throttled) two tier service. Ultimatley the user loses out because the content provider has to recoup the costs from the customer for their own ISP's dodgy behaviour.

1. So BT want BBC to pay for their own content to be made available to BT's customers? Am I understanding this correctly? Shouldn't BT be paying BBC for providing the content? Have I totally missed the point?