On 03/07/07, Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
http://www.ukfree.tv/fullstory.php?storyid=1107051080
I've got to take exception to this bit: "So you can transmit worldwide to tens, thousands, millions or multi-millions of people for a few hundred pounds, compared with the BBC's annual £157 million spend on traditional broadcasting." I don't have any recent figures to hand, but in 2004 the estimated cost of BBC Online's bandwidth was about £2.4 million per year - and that, remember, was mostly just web pages. iPlayer is going to increase the BBC's bandwidth costs by a huge amount - and a whole lot more than "a few hundred pounds", even given a highly-efficient peer-to-peer system. Given its reach - Ofcom estimates it will provide 3% of all viewer hours by 2011 - I suspect that, actually, on a per-viewer-hour basis, it's not going to be as cost-effective as broadcast TV. Plus you have to think of the bigger picture. Can consumer ISPs cope with the potentially-vast increase in P2P traffic? How will those 10Gb caps on "free" ISPs cope? Will ISPs just end up de-prioritizing P2P traffic on their core networks, so that at periods of peak demand they don't suffer service disruptions? Basically, even if the cost of "broadcast" via P2P systems is lower to the BBC, it may not be lower overall when you take into account both the cost to the consumer and to ISPs. Effectively, what the BBC is doing is shifting its "broadcasting" costs on to the consumer and ISPs
