BT has called for an end to the 'free ride' it says video websites such as the BBC iPlayer and YouTube enjoy on its network.

The telecoms group was accused last week of 'throttling' iPlayer performance at peak times, and has only now spoken publicly for the first time about it.

Outlining its intentions, John Petter, managing director of BT Retail's consumer business, said that it hopes to charge content owners for delivery of their programmes over its broadband network. "We can't give the content providers a completely free ride and continue to give customers the [service] they want at the price they expect."

Broadband providers have been complaining for two years about the burden placed on their network by bandwidth-hungry video services.

Mr Petter continued by saying that video sites consuming bandwidth was a "much bigger issue than the BBC iPlayer, it's true of all forms of video content coming across the web. It's becoming a more and more pressing issue". An increasing number of content providers were "developing very profitable business models" delivering content across BT networks, and that they should therefore contribute to the costs they were generating for BT.

Source: FT

Labels: BT, iPlayer, vod