We haven’t time for the boring, protracted version, so let’s take the gloves off. UK Internet service providers (ISPS) have got the hump because the BBC’s hugely popular iPlayer is costing them a fortune in extra traffic. (Up to £831m according to OFCOM, with streaming costs having risen by 20% in the iPlayer’s first month alone). So they want the broadcaster to stump up some cash to cover their extra costs.
The BBC is, surprise surprise, less than sympathetic.

It says A) that the ISPs already charge their broadband customers (i.e. Us) for content streaming, and B) that by the ISPs charging content providers too, one providers’ content could get preferential treatment over that of another, to the detriment of the user.

Instead, the Beeb thinks the ISPs should pass the costs onto their broadband customers via “tiered services” – higher prices in plain English – a policy that Tiscali dubbed a “BBC tax” on broadband subscriptions.

Anyway, it all got very silly and churlish and even ended up on the BBC’s own Today show on Radio 4.

The BBC’s grand poohbah of Internet-type stuff, Ashley Highfield, later stirred things up further by threatening to name and shame ISPs that start traffic-shaping their networks to squeeze or cap content from particular providers – not something the Internet camp, or their reputations, will relish.
The ISPs countered that both Highfield’s argument and his ideas were flawed, impractical, and ill-informed. (And to a degree, it must be said, they were right. His assertion that ISPs really should offer unlimited bandwidth is, quite literally, a pipedream.)

So who’s at fault?

ISPs do operate on gossamer-thin margins. And, as Tiscali has suggested, it is a “bit rich” for a publicly-funded organisation to advise a commercial entity how to run its business.

However, while the ISPs have been quick to shoot from the hip on this occasion, they can’t claim to have always been so honest – they’ve been touting ‘unlimited’ web access for years in full knowledge that this has little or no resemblance to what’s actually delivered. It’s hardly the BBC’s fault that customer expectations have been wound up to such a rarified degree, or that we’ve started using our “unlimited” broadband connections in an unrestrained, “unlimited” way.
Then again, the BBC is on fragile ground too, and should think carefully before publically advocating what’s effectively a broadband subsidy to its perennially unpopular licence fee.

We’re missing the real point though – the inevitable and costly outcome.

The BBC will keep producing content, the ISPs will keep streaming it, BT will keep sitting in the middle making a big fat profit and one way or the other, the end user’s going to end up paying for it.