BBC's iPlayer Chief Pushes Tiered Charging For ISPs

rs232 writes with a link to a story at The Register which begins: "The executive in charge of the BBC iPlayer has suggested that internet users could be charged £10 per month extra on their broadband bill for higher quality streaming." The article suggests (perhaps optimistically) that "after years of selling consumers pipes, not what they carry, [tiered, site-specific pricing] would be tough to pull off."

Re:The bbc is joking what is next a net fee like t

[pxlmusic]

it's more of that stupid notion that the ISPs are trying to get away with double-dipping their customers.

And a BBC viewer says :

[unity100]

"shove it"

Re:Don't most ISPs already have tiered service pla

[jrumney]

In the UK, speed based tiering is all but dead. Now you get whatever speed your line can support (up to 8Mbps or 24Mbps - depending on provider), and the tiering is based on download caps (5Gb, 20Gb, 100Gb, uncapped is typical), after which they either throttle you to dialup speeds, charge you per gigabyte, or in the case of the ISP I am with, do nothing, but if you're over a few months in a row they phone you up and request that you upgrade to the next tier if you want continued service.

Re:We tried this back in 2004, and in mobile netwo

[Zarhan]

Considering QoS...an ISP can only guarantee QoS to any practical degree in their own network.

The whole point of term "Internet-based service" is the fact that it's accessed through a mystical cloud of multiple networks held together by glue, duct tape, BGP and peering agreements. Accessing Slashdot (for me) goes through four AS numbers (try in Linux traceroute with the -A option). So while all those ISPs have been able to agree to exchange bits either in peering or customer/provider model, there's no practical way that I could negotiate a guaranteed access quality to slashdot.org across all those various organizations at any practical cost...

BBC *is* a special case that topologically they have their own network [bbc.co.uk] which is able to peer with other ISPs at lot of places (at least if you are either in US or UK) so they might be able to wrangle deals with directly-connected ISPs to provide some QoS to their peering point. As their customer-base would be UK license payers it might, technically, work.

Whether anyone is actually willing to pay extra for that...I seriously doubt it.

Re:I already pay my tv licence

[Anonymous Coward]

They had a 'business model' that was based on some 'big picture' VP's fantasy of what customers would want or put up with, and their customers handed them their head on a platter by forcing them to release Mac and Linux compatible downloads. The BBC has been repeatedly shamed in the last two years by being caught manipulating and defrauding their customers in telephone dial-ins, a documentary about the Queen, and various awards programs.

I was watching this happen from inside the BBC. The bureaucracy around the folks developing Iplayer very carefully and deliberately shielded the designated developers, and managers, from any criticisms from anywhere else in the BBC. They're getting what they deserve for technological stupidity and for misleading the public about what Iplayer is and how it works: customers are ignoring Iplayer in favor of ThePiratesBay, which works much faster and more reliably, and has a better interface than that one-week-limited piece of crap in Iplayer.

Credit card numbers

[neapolitan]

I sincerely hope you were joking:

All VISA cards start with 4.

All Mastercards start with 51, 52, 53, 54, or 55.

Don't believe me? Take a look in your wallet. :)

Thus, iCONICA, if you just shared the last 12 digits of your Mastercard, you now have cut down the search space of your password to 500 numbers. Moreover, credit card digits have to conform to a checksum (double every other digit + add them all up, must be 0 mod 10.) Thus, I'd estimate we could guess your card within 10 unique numbers, around 100 if VISA. There are ways of getting around the "security digits" and expiration date...

Short story is, don't share your credit card number. Even as a joke.

Re:I'm confused..

[nabsltd]

One big clue to this is to look at pricing where market share isn't being fought over. Business connections in the US are anywhere 2-4x the prices being charged for home connections. This is not a matter of higher utilization because these business connections are sold on the same terms as home connections with "burstable" bandwidth and maximum transfer caps.

First, why would you think that ISPs aren't fighting for market share with business connections?

Second, the reason business connections cost more is that generally you get a lot more. Although I agree with the amount of the price difference, my bandwidth is 24/7 guaranteed, with no cap on the total amount of data transferred. Sure, I pay about double what a "residential" customer pays, but all that really gets me is 5 static IPs, no blocked ports, and an SLA. In general, business customers don't have any of the limits that residential customers have, and that's why the connection costs more for the same speed, but that's not true with my ISP (Verizon FIOS). Residential customers get the same guaranteed bandwidth and no cap (not even a hidden one).

At my work, we also pay a fixed rate regardless of bytes transferred, have 24/7 guaranteed bandwidth, and have no cap. I don't know what residential customers of that ISP get, though, as I don't know any in the area.

Re:We tried this back in 2004, and in mobile netwo

[cjonslashdot]

You are right, but the reason is subtle. The key is to require that ISPs cannot prioritize based on sender. All senders (and receivers) should be treated equally. Then, if QOS is not sufficient, the ISP's media customers will all be equally affected. With such a policy, yes, we would ultimately be paying for the QOS because the cost would propagate to the endpoints.

Re:Credit card numbers

[tlhIngan]

I sincerely hope you were joking:

All VISA cards start with 4.

All Mastercards start with 51, 52, 53, 54, or 55.

Don't believe me? Take a look in your wallet. :)

Thus, iCONICA, if you just shared the last 12 digits of your Mastercard, you now have cut down the search space of your password to 500 numbers. Moreover, credit card digits have to conform to a checksum (double every other digit + add them all up, must be 0 mod 10.) Thus, I'd estimate we could guess your card within 10 unique numbers, around 100 if VISA. There are ways of getting around the "security digits" and expiration date...

Short story is, don't share your credit card number. Even as a joke.

Not only that, but the remainder of the digits in the first group of 4 digits are used to identify the issuing bank. While it's not actually a bulletproof method, knowing where someone is can narrow down the list of valid codes even smaller. Just take the valid numbers, cross-reference them with the list of Visa or Mastercard bank codes, and with the smaller list of numbers, find the banks that are in the local area, and use it knock off a few more numbers (someone in the US will probably not have a UK credit card, for example - they might, but it's extremely rare).

The entropy in the first 4 digits is extremely low.

Anyhow, sharing codes is easy to prevent - just do IP geolocation - non-UK IPs should be restricted from using the codes (and for the most part, IP geolocation is reasonably country accurate), and ensure that one code isn't used from multiple IPs in too often a time, or one code used simultaneously.

Re:Don't most ISPs already have tiered service pla

[Anonymous Coward]

working for a UK ISP i can guarantee that you will not see more then 8Mbps anytime soon in 90% of cases.
BT's exchanges wont let you go any faster, and those exchanges are what most ISP's are using (though not always directly), and the upgrades are 'ongoing' to the point that there is no difference in the setup of the exchange for 8, 16, 24Mbps, whatever links (there are settings for below 8Mbps).
in the rare case where you actually get what your paying for, its probably one of the new & fancy fibre links from virgin.

Re:I already pay my tv licence

[Archibald Buttle]

The live content on iPlayer is not "implied", it's an actual current feature. All the BBC's main TV channels, with the sole exception of BBC Alba (the BBC's new Scottish language channel), are now available online for live streaming through the BBC iPlayer web site.

The addition of BBC One and BBC Two to live streaming was within the last few weeks, but I believe the other 6 channels (BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC News and BBC Parliament) have been streaming for some time now. I'm not sure that local variations of BBC One and BBC Two are available - I only see the London versions and haven't spotted links for others.

Re:I already pay my tv licence

[mdwh2]

Note, this just means he's not in their database. Their policy has nothing to do with whether you require a licence - they just assume everyone without a licence is breaking the law, and send them harrassing threatening letters.

Re:Are they joking, or just accepting reality?

[lamapper]

On the contrary, it is the very essence of a commodity in the economic sense of the term: one ISPs bandwidth is as good as another (at least for now) but there is only so much available.

And this is my fault why?

They should have been building out their infrastructures since 1996, but they have not...and we have been paying additional fees and taxes here in the US for the build out that has NOT occurred.

Until the current ISPs and telcos provide fiber in the end mile as they have in Japan since 2000 and before (100 MB up and 100MB down stream) I really do NOT want to hear their excuses.

Oh yes, it costs less than $.50 per MB to provide those fiber connections up and down in Japan, so do NOT raise my bill with additional excuses of longer fiber runs.

Add to the fact that soon Japan will have 1TB up and 1 TB down...thanks to their foresight at building out their fiber offerings + government intervention and enough said.

You have had years to build out your networks. You have FAILED even when we paid additional money in fees and taxes for you to do just that. Enough is enough.

Stop ripping us off and give us what you owe us.

Give us what we have been paying for (most of us have been promised unlimited for years yet you throttle us down to less than 1 MB...please...

Any comments by any ISPs, telcos and/or their supporters should fall on DEAF ears by us (citizens), by our elected officials (or we vote them out) for the sake of of technological future.

Stop selling us down the river, step up, honor your promises and provide us the service you have promised but failed to deliver on!