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Online video exposes weakness in UK broadband strategy - Infinera

15 августа 2008

Optical networking company explains all-you-can-eat broadband packages were not designed with video in mind.

The continued uptake of online video services, such as the BBC's iPlayer and YouTube, threatens to throttle the U.K.'s broadband capacity, optical networking company Infinera said Thursday.

 


What's more, Internet service providers' current business models are unable to turn the extra traffic into revenue.


"Carphone Warehouse has [network] rings all over
England... and the biggest increases they've seen in traffic have been due to iPlayer," Geoff Bennett, director of product marketing at Infinera, told Total Telecom.


"It's a pain for ISPs," he added.


Furthermore, Bennett believes the
U.K. is suffering from having focused on coverage over capacity when it comes to broadband.


"It's showing up weaknesses in the
U.K.'s strategy for rolling out broadband. The government said they wanted everyone to have access to broadband, but they didn't say what kind they wanted," he said.


Bennett also pointed out that while all-you-can-eat broadband packages allow consumers to access bandwidth-hungry applications for the same cost as low-bandwidth users, they still come with fair usage policies attached.


"It doesn't take many video downloads to reach the usage limit," he said.


Bennett's comments at a time when broadband capacity, or the lack thereof, is hitting the headlines in the
U.S. The FCC recently voted to reprimand cable giant Comcast for limiting Internet traffic to subscribers using high-bandwidth file-sharing services.


The move by the
U.S. regulator was seen as a victory by consumer advocates who support net neutrality – meaning that no particular type of Internet traffic is preferred over another.


"As Infinera I love it when people use up broadband capacity because it means that ISPs need more bandwidth, which is good news for us," said Bennett.


"But say I'm a low-bandwidth consumer, do I want to effectively be subsidising a file-sharer's Internet connection? No, I don't," he said.

Источник: Total Telecom

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