In the same week that BT has asked the likes of the BBC and Google to cough up for their VOD services, media regulator Ofcom has done some sums to see how much it could cost the general public to help the ISPs upgrade their networks to cope with demand.
What Satellite has noted that the report states: "In the case of extreme traffic demands, the costs to upgrade core networks might be in the region of £1-£3 per household per month on top of existing subscriptions."
Ofcom believes, however, that this is an "acceptable" increase, "Given the increase in value of data consumed in the home."
Bottlenecking
The report also warns of bottlenecking in networks due to the popularity of VOD over the internet.
It states: "In many case these backhaul networks are running at close to their maximum capacity. Consequently this part of the network may currently be a bottleneck for some of the video services."
The report can be found at http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research, under the title 'Converged Communications in Tomorrow's World'.
Be warned, there are some 91 pages to wade through. In fact, by the time you have finished, you'll probably be paying £5 a month for iPlayer 2.0.
Via What Satellite
Your comments (12) Click to add a new comment
lovlid
June 14th 2009
12. For me the license fee is more than worth it. I would only pay extra for the iplayer if they gave us more than the last 7 days of programming.
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technobrakes
June 13th 2009
11. I would just like to add a little about us all paying 3 pounds a month to upgrade the hole system. If every penny went to a special body that spent that every penny on a stait of the art system like in japan like a sort of co op then it would be a worth while venture but if the money was going to the ISP's to give to there sher holders then you can forget it. The long term gains would be worth the money.
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mpeskett
June 13th 2009
10. Customers already pay their ISP for their connection, the BBC will be paying someone for their connection, any extra charge is an attempt to double-dip and get paid twice for one end of the link from BBC to customer.
The problem is that ISPs sold people packages that included higher speeds than the network can actually support all at once, which seemed safe enough when it was unlikely that everyone would all try to use their share at once, but now that high-volume applications like the iPlayer are becoming mainstream they realise they need to upgrade their infrastructure, but decide they'd rather just charge someone more to cover their mistake, and hope that discourages people from using the connection they paid for to its fullest extent.
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thegilb
June 12th 2009
9. Well whether it's £3 a month or £5 a month it's still cheaper than a terrestrial TV license, and the content is worth a lot more to me in a digital format that I can access whenever it suits me. Besides, BT has a LOT more to answer for than just this stupid petty little license fee squabble. How about nudging the ISP giant over their traffic shaping? There are a lot more ISP's out there, which is why even if BT want to try and make their own little BT subnet, the users who don't like it have free will to change over to another ISP. Noone is making you use BT. I changed ISP and couldn't be happier with my decision.
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craiggrannell
June 12th 2009
8. Always happy to pay the licence fee. Totally against this top-up, though, unless I can get a discount for not using other BBC services (radio, children's TV, etc.)
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montag
June 12th 2009
7. I live in Peru and would quite happily pay way more than this to get iPlayer. Not getting the BBC here really shows how much value for money the channel is so having to pay a small amount for replays is actually a bargain.
Try some of my local spanish language channels to get the idea. Seriously be worth it for Question Time once a week!!!
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