BT Seeks Providers Fee For Broadband Bandwidth

Leading UK broadband supplier BT is seeking to charge content providers a bandwidth fee for delivering programmes like video and music over its broadband network.

This would mean the likes of the BBC iPlayer, YouTube and many more bandwidth hungry content suppliers paying a fee to run their content over the BT broadband network.

The move by BT follows last weeks report by the BBC that voiced concerns that BT was, at peak times, slowing the broadband speeds users can watch the BBC iPlayer – a process known as ‘throttling’.

In a statement BT said, “Bandwidth costs money, and files like movies and music take up a lot of that. The situation at the moment is that the ISP picks up the tab.”

John Petter, Managing Director of BT’s retail’s consumer business said, “We can’t give the content providers a completely free ride and continue to give customers the service they want at the price they expect.”

BT claims that the amount that they have to pay to support video content is a “significant sum”.

It is not the first time that an ISP has complained about the effects that video content has on their bandwidth. A few years ago, Tiscali complained that video files were putting too much pressure on its network.