BT Broadband throttling iPlayer streaming?

Comments

• Not sure about throttling, but as a long-term BT Broadband customer (on the unlimited package too), I have never had the advantage of using the iPlayer. Within 10 minutes of watching a programme, my router crashes and I have to wait for it to reboot. Nice. BT have consistently failed to resolve anything and even suggested it was my computer! Thanks. Would be nice to try, come on BT sort it out! Posted by Paul, UK
• As a BT customer, im aware of the throttling that does take place in the evenings, though usually i still get at least a 2mb download speed, the problem Paul mentions is not all that surprising, the BT homehub i've noticed is not a very good product, i use wireless routers for my home network and i found the supplied bt hub was very substandard, and i've since replaced it with a more reliable one, something i would recommend to anyone using the btbroadband service, these days adsl routers are very easy to configure, and much more user friendly than the BT ones Posted by Steve, UK
• As a BT Broadband customer I have had many, many problems using iPlayer. Though I haven't noted the times I've had regular problems with slowdown and complete freezing during streaming, iPlayer always seems to work perfectly in the middle of the day, every Wednesday, which is my day off.
  
  Posted by Jonathan rickard, United Kingdom
• Not a BT customer but why not just download the program and watch it off your harddisk ? That's what I do and I *have* 8Meg ADSL (24/7 !!!) Posted by adrianaitken, United Kingdom
• Not a BT customer but I think if you pay for 8Mb you should get 8Mb, you can't use any more than the 8Mb your allotted. My opinion is that BT don't have the capacity in their infrastructure to allow every paying customer to use their full allotted bandwidth, hence the throttling, but it's not only them, Virgin Media do it to and their supposedly fully fibre optic. Posted by Adrian, England
• I have BT and suffer from slow speeds almost all the time. Something needs to be done to end their monopoly on new connections. I only moved to the UK last year and was told I had to initially connect with BT and in order to do this was made take a long contract. Having had BT in Ireland and suffered from overcharging and poor service, I had tried everything to stay away from them here. It is totally unfair and BT should be severely punished. Posted by Brendan, England
• Virgin are NOT fibre optic (that goes to the sub-stations. From there to your property is COAX.
  Still, I left BT because their service and support is pretty much non-existent (like talking to a brick wall when they're not being rude, putting the phone down on you or just good old lying - One tech actually told me they had tested my line and HomeHub and the HomeHub had responded correctly and there was no problem. Pretty good considering it was unplugged and sitting on my bed!). They tried to tell me it was my computer even after their engineers had supplied me with 4 BT home hubs (which kept dying), 3 BTVision boxes (wouldn't work for lack of bandwidth) and 2 sets of NetworkOverPower plugs (kept losing communication with each other). They then told me I would have to buy my own Router as I had been with them for over 12 months. I now belong to UKOnline - Their T&C state they don't throttle anything at any time for any reason. After being with them for several months, I can now confirm this.
  I believe they use SKY's LLU. They also supply 16Mbit for the same price as BT's Option 3 unlimited 8MBit. No contest!
  
  Posted by NevTheTech, UK (Obviously)
• I have an allegedly 8Mb service at home which is NEVER good enough to stream i-player without stopping mid programme at least a few times. I was in a hotel recently where the streaming worked OK, so it can be done I thought! I just cannot see how we are going to get high def streamed when the basic service is so poor. Matters will become worse with X-Box announcing live streaming of movies through its consoles. As a games console household that can only make a bad situation intolerable. BT and Sky, please sort things out! Posted by David, West Midlands UK
• anyone tried koosey i might sing up to them Posted by mark, bucks
• As a BT Broadband customer I have had many, many problems using iPlayer. Though I haven't noted the times I've had regular problems with slowdown and complete freezing during streaming, iPlayer always seems to work perfectly in the middle of the day, every Wednesday, which is my day off.
  
  
  http://www.digitaldirect.co.uk/ Posted by TVs, England
• "Traffic shaping" policies, as they're known, are implemented by almost all ISPs, so that one user downloading thousands of movies doesn't hurt the experience of others."
  
  Or, more precisely, so that they can get away with ludicrously high contention ratios rather than providing the bandwidth their customers have paid them for.
  
  BT uses 50:1 out of our exchange. So if everyone is using it at once, my 1Mbps is actually 20kbps .. a little worse than dial-up speed .. and that's exactly how it feels.
  
  The bit that makes me spit is that BT is using my ISP fees and my line rentals from its rural monopoly to subsidise it's 'headline' service in urban areas where it faces competition. Sort of like Robin Hood, only in reverse. Posted by Ashley, Cambs
• I have had several discussions with BT about their broadband 'service'. Their so-called 'customer service' is truly appalling. I am now past my 18 months contract and am looking for an alternative ISP. BT? Never again! Posted by Mike Loftus, UK
• Wouldn't touch BT with a barge pole, was with virgin after BT but had loads of problems with their boxes!
  I was as recommended to try Utility Warehouse's Broad Call service, No contrct apart from a £50 admin fee if disconnected within 12 months plus if you're on an LLU exchange you get upto 24mb for £19.99 (includes line rental within the price as well) and free national and global land line calls to boot! So far so very good! Posted by Steve, Ingerland
• I'm hearing a lot about speed throttling on Option 1, what about the others?
  I'm on option 3 currently and even I have noticed recently that iplayer simply goes from perfect to unwatchable at the same time every night within a 15 minute period.
  
  I spent hours on the phone with BTs so called, 'customer service'. Sending me from department to department, having to repeat my problem to every single one of them. I was told someone would ring me back with a solution, Of course, they never did.
  
  I'm only 21, and they've already lost me as a lifetime customer. Posted by N Sykes, Lancashire, UK
• Has anyone tried Utility Warehouse? - Which? Magazine Best buy award for their broadband. Ive been with them for over a year now - fantastic customer service and support.
  
  www.BigSave.org.uk Posted by B. Kanes, UK
• I recently moved from virgin to BT broadband option 3 they said my speed will be 6.5Mbps but i receive only 2mbps during the day time and less than that during the night . Also there is a problem with BT , they do throttling on bittorents . When i used virgin i had no such issues and the speed was very good but now i am getting only a maximum of 15Kbps using bittorrent .
  
  When speaking with the customer service technical advisor he is saying my speed is 7Mbps but when i do in speekchecker.com it shows only 2mbps and tho he is still firm that there is no problem with speed because his system is showing that iam receiving 7mbps(which is obtained from sitting in a remote location.) Since it is not like other products if we dont have a peace of mind we can return it with in 28days but here when i asked to cancel the broadband they say u have to pay 12month tariff unless the technical team says there is a fault .
  No way the technical team will say its fault and now iam in a catch 22 situation.
  
  
  PS ; Its been only 6days since i moved to BT and i am very very disappointed with this throttling and other speed issues but they never compromise on their tariff charging £25 a month.
  
  On the whole with my experience with BT .. Pls never go for it if you need a broadband connection Posted by Dinesh, Glasgow
• The throttling isn't just option one, Off peak, my connection will happily download from the web at over 800Kbps (around 6.5Mb) and everything works brilliant - iPlayer streams correctly, youtube hardly needs to buffer, the broadband is excellent. On Peak, this is much different - iPlayer is unusable and you get constant buffering on YouTube. I hope they fix this sometime or else i'm leaving. Posted by Andrew, Northern Ireland
• I'm with Tiscali and experience the same problem, both with streaming and with downloads from iplayer. I can watch other websites' streaming no problem but BBC downloads take days and streaming is unwatchable. This happens in the evening, I am not at home to test it during the day. It's so annoying Posted by Al, Northern Ireland
• Have just switched to a BT HomeHub2 - an upgrade which took many, many hours on the phone to achieve and have immediately started getting problems with internet connection. It is often slow to connect and as for streaming - forget it! Despite having the latest version of Flash on my Mac both BBC iPlayer and YouTube are effectively impossible to watch. BT are a nightmare to deal with though I suspect many ISPs are equally poor. We are increasingly dependent on the internet for all aspects of our lives and these companies really do need to improve both their service and infrastructure. The current reality falls far short of the marketing promises. Posted by J Hine, UK
• BT Broadband speed at peak times is useless. We like to watch tv through skyplayer upstairs on occasions and bbc iplayer and it is unplayable. At the moment my skybox is broken and it was impossible to watch the champions league tonight. I am on BT Total broadband and also spent many hours on the phone to several different departments. When I wanted to make a complaint they just said we will note your comments and try to improve in the future and wouldn't ake the complaint. When the contract is up I'm off. Don't be taken in by the high profile adverts on the TV. Posted by CP, UK
• BT throttle my connection to all BBC sites constantly. Infact I can usually only load 1 or 2 BBC webpages before the connection is totally severed (only to BBC pages, everything else works fine).
  
  I have the most expensive package and get just under 2mb/s on occasion. This is a huge leap from last year when it peaked at 0.5mb/s, however last year there was no throttling and so access to webpages was always there. There is nothing more annoying then reading a news article and not being able to click on another one for around 5 minutes when magically it will load and then stop again.
  
  My connection is not fast enough for iplayer HD however I can watch normal shows on the player so long as I load the page during a working 'window' and then i'll have about 20 seconds to start the video or the connection will drop. If i've chosen in time and it's loaded it will play right to the end with no problem, regardless of length, although, if say I have clicked the wrong episode and decide to click another it will rarely work and i usually have to wait 5+ mins again to try.
  
  I know it is BT doing this 'throttling' however it seems to me that this greedy tactic is more akin to a murderous throttle than it is like the one you'll find in your car.
  
  What annoys me the most is that I pay for a BBC licence fee to use BBC content and I pay BT a line rental and broadband fee also to see that content yet I CAN'T ACTUALLY SEE IT!
  
  The BBC and BT should stop fighting and fix this immediately or they will both lose, and I will bet money on that. On average a happy customer will tell 5 people about their experience, but an unhappy one will tell 9. Posted by Anonymous, England
• Been with BT for 4 months now - I really can't wait until my years contract is up. The speed I get in the evenings is appallingly slow - an example: a couple of hours ago I was downloading an update for the PC and it averaged 10kbps.
  
  I didn't have this problem with my previous ISP, always nice fast speeds, in fact, only a day or two after I switched to BT, my line speed dropped by 512K.
  
  Another thing that makes me angry is that BT have emailed me to tell me that I'm near my 10GB limit (I'm on option 1 BTW) - actually they claim that I'm at around 8GB at the moment, which they provide no way of verifying or checking your usage in any way. I don't mind them telling me that I've used my allowance for the month, it just seems strange that it's suddenly jumped to this level after a few years as I was only using about 6GB on average with my last ISP which is why I chose the option 1 with a 10GB limit. Posted by Get me away from BT, England
• I too have been hit with this but on a much larger scale.... i was on option 1 and changed to option 3 2 weeks ago ... since then ive apparently used 92GB of download!!! Im told by customer services that the only way they tell is by way of a print out that they get--- thats it NO explanation!! to make matters worse ive also been told that im going to now be restricted (my speed) during peek times!! i thought that the definition of unlimited was to have no restrictions -- Am i wrong? Posted by THardy, U.K