IP Democracy: UK ISPs to BBC: Pay Up or We'll Slow You Down

The net neutrality debate is still a distinctly North American phenomenon (and really an almost U.S.-centric idea), but that may not last for long. A group of UK ISPs, including Tiscali, BT and Carphone Warehouse are telling the BBC that its new iPlayer, a platform that allows users to download BBC TV shows, is a possible bandwidth hog and that the vaunted British institution should pay up or pay the consequences.

“The internet was not set up with a view to distributing video. We have been improving our capacity, but the bandwidth we have is not infinite,” said Mary Turner, chief executive of Tiscali UK. “If the iPlayer really takes off, consumers accessing the internet will get very slow service and will call their ISPs to complain.”

The ISPs plan to give iPlayer traffic low priority unless the BBC coughs up some money for faster bandwidth. Hmmm…that’s what folks fear U.S. broadband providers will do absent net neutrality regulations.

But, the BBC isn’t kicking up any regulatory dust yet. The programmer says that it is in talks with the ISPs to monitor the costs associated with their service.

Like smoking in public places, maybe some things that are taboo in the U.S. are just more acceptable in the U.K. You’d better believe that if any U.S. ISP were to demand extra payment from a online video distributor, that would be an INCIDENT.

Apparently, however, the BBC and the ISPs are trying to work this out, and the BBC isn’t totally rejecting the idea of bandwidth payments. That could change, however, if the ISPs decide to gouge the BBC to the point of making the provision of iPlayer service impossible. Stay tuned.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on August 13, 2007 12:46 PM to IP Democracy