Who will pay as the Internet grows?

BERLIN: Last Christmas, the BBC started an online service called iPlayer that streams live television programs and a backlog of shows from the previous week to online audiences. Through April, Britons had watched 75 million episodes of programs like "Doctor Who" and "The Apprentice."

While a boon for the broadcaster, the service has burdened some British broadband operators, who say their networks have had to carry sharp increases in BBC video traffic. A few have even called on the BBC to share the cost of transmitting the video.

"What we are asking for is not unreasonable," said Jody Haskayne, a spokeswoman for Tiscali UK, a broadband operator with 1.9 million customers. Noting that the BBC pays to have its programs delivered over the air and on cable, she said, "there is a precedent for payment."

The BBC has balked at paying broadband operators. But the debate over the iPlayer reflects a broader change in the relationship between Internet operators and content providers, a bond that has nurtured the growth of the Internet over the past 20 years.

Facing a surge in traffic, many European Internet providers are building faster networks. But rising traffic from video-driven Web services like iPlayer and YouTube, as well as Internet gaming sites and social networks, threatens to outpace the capacity of even these faster networks, industry experts said.

"There is an economic tension building," said Pat Dolan, general manager in Europe at Tellabs, a U.S. maker of networking equipment. "If you look at the demands on network operators, the question becomes: How can they continue to make money when out of nowhere comes this huge volume of video that wasn't there before?"

Amid the growth, some network operators have begun restricting high-volume broadband users during peak times, an issue that has become sensitive because some advocates of an unfettered Internet say any effort to limit traffic is tantamount to censorship.

The critics of limits, who include free speech advocates, peer-to-peer file sharers and major content providers whose services depend on the Internet for distribution, argue in favor of "network neutrality" - the idea that every bit of data should be given equal priority, whether it is part of a simple e-mail message or a cumbersome video file. Equal access for all, supporters say, is good for innovation, allowing start-up companies to flourish on the Internet.

But network operators argue that as users of large amounts of bandwidth earn ever more revenue on the Web, they no longer should be given a free ride. Otherwise, they say, telecommunications companies will be unable to build the new, faster networks needed to facilitate the start-ups of the future.

The principle could get its first legal test this month in the United States should the Federal Communications Commission rule on whether to rebuke Comcast, a broadband and cable operator, for limiting some peer-to-peer file sharing during peak hours. Comcast has argued that it has the right to manage its growing network demands.

The debate in Europe has centered less on free speech issues and more on whether telecommunications operators should have the right to access the new broadband networks of their competitors, a right they do not now  have.

Under legislation drafted by Erika Mann, a Social Democratic member of the European Parliament from Hannover, Germany, operators would be given so-called interconnection rights in exchange for either shouldering a portion of the cost of investing in a new network or by paying a user fee based on their traffic.

The Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy is scheduled to consider the bill in July. "We are trying to strike a balance," Mann said. "We want to make sure that the Internet remains interconnected and operators have an incentive to invest and build these new networks."

European regulators so far have not intervened. In Britain, the media regulator Ofcom has studied the effect of the iPlayer on broadband operators but has announced no plans for regulation.

In Brussels, the European commissioner responsible for Internet issues, Viviane Reding, said in April that traffic prioritization by broadband operators was legitimate, but she wanted to give European Union regulators the option of setting minimum quality thresholds for consumers, to ensure that their service was not slowed down too much.

Consumers occasionally notice the limits placed on high-volume broadband users, when streaming videos slow into a series of halting still photos.

At Tiscali, Haskayne said, low-volume users can still scroll the Internet or check e-mail during peak hours because high-volume users are temporarily given lower priority.

The practice, said Dan Cole, the director of product marketing at Thus, a company that operates the Demon broadband network in Glasgow, is called traffic shaping.

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