BBC iPlayer pushes broadband users to the limit
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008The hugely successful BBC iPlayer has seen a massive recent rise in internet traffic which has seen customers exceed their monthly usage policies which has seen users restricted to near-dial-up speeds, or having to pay extra charges at the end of the month, or in some cases, having their internet connection temporarily cut.
The iPlayer, it turns out, is pretty bandwidth hungry, commanding on average 300Mb per download, and has seen viewers eager to catch up on BBC programmes they’ve missed out on, inadvertently choking their connections.
Traffic shaping and connection throttling, as seen on the Virgin Media cable broadband packages, were introduced to prevent users downloading massive torrents of illegal files, but it turns out that many users are penalised for using entirely legitimate services such as the iPlayer and VoIP calls, which happen to consume a lot of bandwidth.
Problems only really arise when punters use the download aspect of the iPlayer – streaming content directly from the website eats up less bandwidth. Service providers have been quick to blame the BBC for not tailoring the iPlayer software so that downloads were smaller, whilst customers have hit out at ISPs for not investing in the development of the UK’s telecoms infrastructure – surveys reveal that the UK is lagging behind most of Europe when it comes to broadband speeds, with punters on the continent enjoying on speeds of up to 100Mbps – the average speed here in the UK fluctuates between 3 and 4Mbps.
