Apparently, (I say apparently as the  news is mostly coming in from ‘scare’ stories from the papers) ISPs are going to cause trouble if the BBCs catch-up TV service takes up too much of their bandwidth. Mary Turner, CEO of Tiscali UK says, “The internet was not set up with a view to distributing video. We have been improving our capacity, but the bandwidth we have is not infinite”. (quote via the FT).

It’s obvious that a massive (unlikely given how fiddly it is) take up of the VoD services would cause extra internet traffic – but most people in the UK are on capped services, they can’t download (or p2s upload) any more than their quota without paying extra. So extra – and not easily monitored – traffic would be something you’d think that the ISPs would be pleased about.

Until you realise that they have their own IPTV services. That they hope to charge for. Network neutrality anyone?