Video streaming up 170% in UK since iPlayer launch

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 18 Jul 2008 at 14:09

BT-owned ISP PlusNet claims that video streaming has increased by almost 170% since the launch of the BBC iPlayer beta a year ago.

The ISP claims that streaming video now accounts for almost 10% of all download traffic in the evenings.

It claims that 287GB of video content was watched in a single hour, between 9-10pm on 30 June, as people caught up with the Euro 2008 football from the night before.

The company says it sees regular peaks as popular programmes hit the iPlayer service. "Customers watching the previous day's episode of Doctor Who use a large amount of traffic every Sunday," says Neil Armstrong, PlusNet's products director. "However on our busiest Sunday ever, Top Gear and the Euro 2008 final were also big contributors."

Yet, while streaming traffic continues to rise - not least because of the enduring popularity of YouTube - peer-to-peer traffic has decreased. "P2P appears to be shrinking," says Armstrong. "It's too early to say for sure but this could be down to the increasing popularity of streaming, rather than downloading media."

This could be bad news for the BBC, which relies on P2P for the download aspect of iPlayer, but also offers a streaming service - largely to quell the furore from Mac and open-source users who cannot use the Windows-only download service.

However, with the BBC picking up the hosting costs for the streams, it could prove to be a significant growing cost for the Corporation and, consequently, licence-fee payers.