(UK) People are watching too much streaming media, say ISPs

BBC being run off taxpayers money was always gonna end up with this kind of situation with the online streaming of media. Who pays for it..... Well the ISP's i think should be able to deal with it if users arent going over there allowed bandwidth. I mean most ISP's cap our dl limits anyway...

 

What a clever bunch ISPs are. They sell you a service but want you to use it as little as possible and complain and cry foul when someone tries to get their money's worth. Communication usage will only grow. It's about time they 'grow some' and man up to building that infrastructure with these huge bills we pay them each month.

 

This is mostly BT's fault, their lines are showing their age and that they need to be replaced. The only people with good internet in the UK are on fibreoptic but that isn't available to all of us. There are places all over the UK where BT has mixed copper with aluminium in the lines and with these you can be right next to the exchange and barely get 2Mb.

It;s been estimates that to replace the network will cost around 11 Billion pounds. BT's says the network in no ways needs upgraded and that they will only consider it when there is demand for fast internet. The funny thing is that the longer the upgrade is left, the more money it's going to cost.

 

thats the point tho, why should BT invest in upgrading the lines when they wont gain anything from it? Its an understandable move by BT but one i have, i want faster internet!!!

 

Firstly, the UK health service is NOT free.

And as for the topic at hand, I agree completely with anyone who says this fails on the ISPs. If they claim the can deliver xMB/s down and yMB/s up, then they should be able to. This is cleary come about because ISPs are trying to get money off people who hardly use their lines. When they do (for things like streaming as per the topic title), the ISPs realise they over extended and royally ****ed up.

If they sell someone their "Unlimited Pack" with "up to 8MB/s download speeds", they should be able to provide this regardless of the circumstance. I can understand unavoidable issues (malfunctions etc), but not being able to provide it purely because everyone is using something they paid for is atrocious.

 

What's next? "ISP's think users are spending too much time on the Internet. 2 hours daily allowance is being incoprorated" or "British ISPs find dial-up sufficient for day-to-day use. Broadband removed from the British marked"

What the hell? Are they expecting people to use their 20Mbit connections to read e-mails only?

 

They have been selling broadband here for the past decade on the basis that no one is going to use it. I think we have 98% of people on broadband as well, no dial-up here. The ISPs have coasted along with the bare minimum of infastructure and sold the broadband packages for as cheap as possible, free in some cases. Now everyone is going to start to use their connection and the ISPs are screwed. They can't raise prices because they've been selling "up to 8meg" for next to nothing for so long, and they don't have the cash to upgrade their systems.
Basically the UK has hit the wall.
Hopefully the BBC iplayer thing is just the start, people are going to get pissed off at the service getting worse than it is now, then some goverenment body will have to step in and force BT to do a FTTH upgrade on the country.
Saying that I get an ADSL2 upgrade end of the month and an upgrade to 12Mbit down and 1.5Mbit up for £3 less than I'm currently paying and with no caps..

 

Who are you with?

And how do I know if I have ADSL2...

 

Joey, I'm just curious. I see you have AOL as your ISP. How are they compared to the rest? I've always read so much negative about them, especially in America, but since they aren't here I have no experience with them myself. Are they really one of the few to deliver true uncapped, unshaped connections in the UK?

 

AOHELL... I recommended my mum use them purely because she will use the free tech support phone line alot!!! Saves me the hassle.
However she has had plently of problems with them.
Not sure on the unlimited statement, but all that say unlimited, have a "fair usage" policy. Even on BT business here there is still a fair usage policy which says downloading large files at peak times will result in bandwidth throttling. Just strange that a business line has a fair usage policy when peak times are at work hours!!

ISP = screwed. UK government has to step up.

As for licensing for TV, thats a whole other issue that we have discussed here before.

 

The BBC License fee is worth its weight in gold. It is truly a unique service which people across the globe won't appreciate.

Though the license fee has become to over bloated much like the BBC.

They need to remove every local radio station for a start commercial radio can cover anything the BBC want to achieve in that area.

And I'm sad to say it but high profile sport such as the World Cup , F1 , Champions League , European championships should not be bid apon by the BBC.

The who idea behind the BBC nowadays is that it can offer us programming with no commercial interest involved.



Look what you have got me started into

 

no offence intended but are you mad ? , it is over priced for a start .
never anything worth watching just lately , and don't get me started on eastenders , thats just one large pile of **** tbh lol .
they make programs using the licence fee then sell they abroad , they are in it for the money only . look at the new doctor who , it is not a patch on the orig series's . the new special fx look cheapo , and the new new aliens/monter are a joke and do not look as good as the older one's

 

The UK arm aren't quite the same as the US one, they never have been. They were the first in the UK with the "unlimited" connections, when "unlimited" actually meant "unlimited". I think we've been sold off to another ISP, can't remember what it's called, but they kept the AOL customer's separate.
I currently pay £25 a month, it's been that much a long while and I've generally felt they have left me alone. A couple of years ago they started some peak time restrictions because I use it a lot, so if I really thrash my connection... like a hundred GB a month, then they tighten up and slow the connection down to 512Kbits between 17:30 and 22:00. I've been lighter than that lately and, it's not restricted at the moment. Used probably around 20GB I think.
The connection is 400KB/sec and that's as much as a 8Mbit DSL can do on my line with it's distance from the exchange.
They don't traffic shape bit torrent as far as I can tell, they've never sent me an email saying I've over used it. £25 might be a bit high, but they've left me alone for the the most part, so I've not bothered changing it.
End of the month "bethere" ISP are upgrading our phone exchange to adsl2 and from what I gather they are ok. So, I'll get me the speed tripling and switching to them.


Skiddywinks you can check out loads of info of your what's going on with your phone exchange here. http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php

 

There is no such thing as an "Unlimited" connection package, regardless of ISP. They ALL have FUPs and they will all have no problem with throttling you for using something you pay for. This is the sad state of affairs with broadband (at least in the UK). They are so obsessed with getting people's money that they can not even provide the service in full when everyone wants it. It's despicable.

As for the TV License, the thing is drastically overpriced. The problem with it is that you either get the whole thing, or you don't buy a TV. Even if you only watch one or two BBC shows, or even don't plan on watching ANY, if you have a TV capable of receiving the channels then you have no choice and have to pay it.

I'm happy to pay for Top Gear, Question Time and a few others etc, but these are only a few shows and you are forking out over £100 just to use a TV you have already bought. It is also despicable.

EDIT: Wow, great link Joey, very informative. Just wondering what the hell 21CN is, since it says "BT have set a target date of Q2 2009 for the switch to 21CN for the Caerwys exchange".

 

I'm pretty sure a lot of money must be spent on the content servers for the BBC's iplayer services, streaming such a large amount of media to a lot of people would require some serious storage and performance.

 

My mum has AOL, and when I'm at home I've noticed massive throttling of peer to peer during daytime hours. I can't ever seem to break 10KB dl in the daytime, but easily break 100KB after midnight.

Sorry for the double post.

 

So is there anything special with this iPlayer? Anything new? I mean, the NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting) have had all their programming available in high-quality streams on their websites for years and years. I thought this was pretty much standard practice for "licence" channels around the world. Or is this iPlayer something else?

 

ISP's main idea is limit as much bandwidth as they can. No Bittorrents, no large downloading etc.

You pay a premium price, and get as little data as possible.

Heaven forbid they should have people actually use what they pay for and their network. If it's getting congested, upgrade, probably more than likely got enough money to do the upgrades.
ISP's are huge tightasses when it comes to network upgrades and providing for their customers.

Doesn't matter where you are in the world, they are all like that, and the good ones that do, are usually more expensive than the others.