According to Tiscali, the use of the BBC’s iPlayer is having a detrimental effect on their network. All very interesting, considering that other ISPs (BT and Virgin Media) are quoted as saying they can’t see a difference in their network performance. And if things don’t get any better, Tiscali say the users are going to have to foot the bill. Tiscali must be smoking the crack pipe again.. Why are the users going to have to pay more for a service they’ve already paid for? Is this going to be pencilled into the T&C’s at the last minute? At what point is internet activity normal activity in Tiscali’s eyes? What are the real issues here?

There are 1 of 2 things going on with Tiscali, which is painfully obvious. It’s either that Tiscali’s network infrastructure is so bad and so close to collapse that one more service used over it’s network will grind it to a halt - and they don’t want the general public to be “aware” of their problems (search for “virus effect” on my blog for more information.) Or the other reason could be to make a quick buck. I don’t believe that use of the iPlayer can have that big an impact on your services if your services are robust to begin with. I also haven’t really understood why Tiscali think they can get the BBC to chip in a little something for the strain - although I guess the BBC and other big corporations have very deep pockets. It all appears to be a big smokescreen to Tiscali’s connectivity problems to me. After all - Youtube hasn’t been approached to part with cash, and the bandwidth from them must be massively higher than that from iPlayer. [SHOW ME]