BBC Player Strains Bandwidth
 

The British Broadcasting Corp. is under fire from Internet service providers over how its new multimedia player may cause an increase in demand for bandwidth, placing greater stresses on the infrastructure of ISP's. It's the latest controversy to erupt over the BBC's iPlayer, an application in a public beta that lets people download and watch programs broadcasted within the last seven days. The iPlayer uses peer-to-peer technology, which allows bits of content to be download from other users, at speeds that enable up to 300M-bytes of data to be downloaded per hour.

A BBC spokeswoman said on Monday the broadcaster is in regular discussions with ISPs regarding the costs of downloading video. In a statement, the BBC pushed the issue back to the ISPs, which it said are responsible for pricing, monthly limits on how much data can be downloaded as well as acceptable use polices for their users. "Inevitably, some ISP packages will be more suitable than others for the download of large amounts of data," the BBC said in a statement. "All broadband is not equal."

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News source: PCWorld

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