 |  | By Neil Hawkins Senior Staff Writer Friday, 11 April 2008 |
CONTROVERSY abounds this week, as rows flare about BBC iPlayer bandwidth costs and advertising junkies Phorm are caught with their hands in the cookie jar, well, deleting stuff from their own Wikipedia page.
Row erupts over iPlayer bandwidth costs
WHEN there’s something to shout about going on in the broadband world you can always rely on someone from Tiscali Broadband to wade into the argument all guns blazing.
Last week the BBC’s Head of Technology Ashley Highfield penned a detailed blog posting which outlined his views concerning who should pay for the rising costs of traffic driven by BBC iPlayer.
After ISPs suggested the BBC should fund the spiralling costs, estimated by OfCOM to be an eye-watering £800m, Highfield retaliated by suggesting that broadband providers who managed iPlayer traffic or slowed it down could be ‘named and shamed’ by the BBC.
In an interview with Radio 4’s Today program, Tiscali’s Simon Gunter argued that "I have heard that the BBC is working on building a caching infrastructure so that storage devices can go on an ISP's network but even if it goes ahead it doesn't save costs on the backhaul network,"
Gunter, Tiscali’s top strategist, told BBC Radio 4 that, "The question is about whether we invest in extra capacity or go to the consumer and ask them to pay a BBC tax,"
Highfield’s responded by stating that, "It may be putting extra strain on the network but it would be a bit odd for the BBC to fund such an upgrade."
This issue cannot be easily compared to any other kind of traffic issue because the BBC is funded publically and it is private companies who are picking up the bill.
It is also easy for broadband providers to pick on iPlayer as all traffic come from one source, unlike peer-to-peer traffic which has millions of possible routes across the internet.
One possible solution involves broadband providers putting their prices up but Tiscali, the bastion of cheap broadband probably won’t favour this option, hence the public voicing of its concerns.
The saga continues.
PlusNet wins every award going, ever.
PLUSNET is a broadband provider which doesn’t hit the headlines often but just get on with the job in hand and do it well.
PlusNet’s got a damn fine reputation for customer service and this is why in March PlusNet won no fewer than 11, yes 11 awards!
They weren’t Mickey Mouse awards either, at the biggest broadband industry awards PlusNet picked up the ‘Best Consumer ISP’ gong and the uSwitch satisfaction survey saw it placed first in 9 out of 11 categories.
PlusNet even set a new personal best in its own customer satisfaction survey!
The Sheffield based broadband provider has also recently refreshed some of its offers. Currently it offers its home phone and broadband packages for half price for a limited time and gamers can get hold of a £40 GAME voucher if they sign up for PlusNet’s excellent Broadband Your Way Pro package.
We’ve handily listed PlusNet's range of packages in one place for you to compare, so check them out!
Eclipse Internet cuts prices for limited time
ECLIPSE Internet has stuck its head above the parapet with an announcement regarding the price of nearly all its packages.
New home and business customers alike will benefit from the cuts, which give you discounts of up to half price on you broadband for a limited period.
The broadband old-man has reduced its Home Broadband Option 1 package price from £14.99 to £9.95 per month and Home Broadband Option 2 from £18.99 to £13.95 per month.
Both deals last for the first 3 months of a 12 month contract.
You can compare all of Eclipse's broadband packages - and read full reviews of each package - on our Eclipse Broadband comparison page.
Phorm caught fiddling with its Wiki
AS if people didn’t trust them enough, Phorm this week admitted to The Register that whilst editing ‘some factual inaccuracies’ in the company’s own Wikipedia entry they, ‘erroneously removed some relevant items in the editing process’.
The advertising system that Phorm developed has attracted nothing but controversy since it was revealed to the general public. The general idea is that information about browsing habits is gathered up and used to provide more direct advertising.
Wikipedia entries which discussed items such as The Guardian pulling out of the deal for ethical reasons and links to articles criticising the system’s secret trials that were held over the past couple of years were removed despite being factually correct.
It seems that removing the now reinstated items has backfired massively, attracting more attention to the contentious issues than before. Oops!
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