Also from today's Guardian.
Not strictly a broadcast topic but of interest - we won't even go into 
the technical quality and ask why when HD is being so heavily touted, a 
very poor quality service seems to be popular.
Back to the old adage that it's the content that counts - not the 
quality (to some extent - agreed).

Mike

(PS why can't we ALL refuse to support Mr Apple by referring to 
everything as an iSomething? e.g 'podcast', 'iPlayer')






What is the true market impact of the BBCi iPlayer?


Media FAQ

Steve Hewlett


The BBC iPlayer is proving more of a hit with viewers (or should we be 
called users?) than even some of its strongest supporters had hoped. The 
remodelled system, which no longer requires punters to download a 
separate player to their desktop, pulled in a million users downloading 
3.5m programmes in just two weeks after its launch on Christmas day. 
That's twice as fast as the BBC predicted — and industry analysts 
forecast that this growth pattern is

sustainable and likely to continue for some time to come.

Largely because of this success, some rather difficult questions about 
the iPlayer's market impact — virtually ignored (or at least glossed 
over) in the BBC Trust's public value test (PVT), which authorised the 
launch of the service — are racing back up the public policy agenda. 
According to a report last week, the BBC is already inhibiting the 
growth of commercially financed on-demand services by leading viewers to 
expect such services to be free. This issue was discussed at the time of 
the PVT but led to no firm conclusions — largely because at that stage 
the market hardly existed.

But there is another even more pressing issue that the BBC Trust appears 
to have considered and then passed over — the question of the huge 
increase in demand for UK bandwidth caused by people using the BBC 
iPlayer, and who pays for it.

The summary of Ofcom's "market impact assessment" — conducted as part of 
the PVT process — flagged up the issue and urged the BBC Trust to 
consider it fully. From that moment on the buck was effectively passed.

But look at the full Ofcom report and you can see just how important it 
thought the bandwidth issue was. On the basis of relatively conservative 
estimates of iPlayer usage, it predicted the need for a "significant 
amount of infrastructure build". Ofcom went on to say that in its view 
these costs — which could run close to a billion pounds — "are relevant 
to an overall assessment of the value to consumers of using the 
iPlayer". At the very least, prices to all consumers — most of them 
licence payers — would be likely to rise once internet service providers 
sought to pass on the costs of their investment.

The BBC Trust initially attempted to downplay Ofcom's estimates of the 
likely costs and said that capacity constraints was an issue to be 
resolved by competition in the broadband market. In its final report, 
the trust conceded that the BBC might discuss the issue with ISPs.

But Britain's internet infrastructure is heading for the buffers, and 
who pays for the necessary increase in capacity, and how those costs are 
recovered, are pressing questions. If, as is most likely, consumers pay 
with increases in their broadband subscriptions, and if that results in 
reduced use of the iPlayer — at least among the less wealthy — the BBC 
Trust will have to look at this again.

Whichever way you look at it, the iPlayer is unlikely to be "free" for long.