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BBC accuses BT of capping broadband download speeds

The BBC has raised concerns that BT are capping download speeds on some of its broadband packages and affecting the speed available on its iPlayer video service.

The BBC said in a statement: “While customers listening to audio and lower quality video streams would be unaffected, we are concerned that at peak times some customers’ higher quality video streams may be interrupted by buffering before falling back to a lower-quality version.”

The iPlayer has three different speeds it can run at, 500Kbps (roughly 0.5Mbps), 800Kbps, 1.5Mbps and 3.2Mbps (HD only).  The iPlayer operates at one of these according to the speed of a user’s connection.  The BBC thinks that BT is making viewers use it at the lowest possible speed of 500Kbps, which makes the viewing experience less satisfactory.

They also cited the experience of a BT customer.  Andrew Griffiths in South London, who is on the basic BT Option 1 package said: “From about 1730 onwards something like BBC iPlayer becomes impossible. It’s fine during the day but come the evening, it’s a no go.”

BT however has hit back and claims that they don’t cap speeds at 700Kbps.  In a statement, BT said: “Where we manage bandwidth, we do so in order to optimise the experience for all customers, whatever they want to do online. We believe there is a real issue that content owners like the BBC need to address and we are currently in discussions with the BBC executive to ensure that our customers get the best possible experience in the future.”

Like other broadband providers, BT does employ traffic management on its network, which basically means that the speed of the connection may get limited at peak times when the network is at its busiest.  Although providers have improved their literature, some users are still not clear what the traffic management policy is as many users often don’t read the full terms and conditions of the package they are signing up to, or the information isn’t easy to access.