BBC iPlayer highlights UK’s data capacity problems…again
August 13th, 2007 by Lloyd Gofton
The lack of data capacity in the UK is back on the news agenda today, and it seems the blame is being laid firmly at the BBC’s door…or to be more precise, the BBC iPlayer, which could eventually eat up too much capacity. Seems a little harsh to me, but first the facts:
The BBC’s iPlayer is based on peer-to-peer technology, meaning files are mainly distributed between users rather than being served by a main host, which of course increases the capacity required significantly, and passes the cost to the ISP.
In addition, on-demand services such as The BBC’s iPlayer and Channel 4’s 4oD, offer longer programmes at higher quality, which can be 30 times as bandwidth hungry as YouTube, according to a Tiscali quote on The BBC.
Okay, I’m getting the picture now. All these nasty broadcasters and start-ups are utilising the web to offer better quality services. How very dare they. They have the audacity to utilise the web for publishing their content, the very cheek!
Okay, maybe I’m being a bit unfair. I realise the ISPs can only work with the infrastructure in place and that the broadband structure in the UK cannot cope with the amount of data that users are demanding. However, it is a bit frustrating considering we’re not getting the broadband speeds we’ve been paying for, according to the latest research from Which? (The Times has the story), and now we’re told there isn’t enough capacity to support content delivery.
At the end of the day, this wasn’t a surprise, the increase in online video, the surge in UGC and different types of content distribution have been on the horizon for some time. If the network can’t deal with the capacity required, is there an open forum between the broadcasters and the ISPs to manage the capacity? Is it a case of too little too late? Or are we just bumbling along throwing more and more data at an aging network without any sort of structure?
A few practical solutions would be appreciated.
