Video Streaming & BT Broadband
It seems BT is being less than straight with its broadband customers when it comes to video streaming. Maybe this shouldn't be a surprise considering BT's history of secretly intercepting customer data on behalf of spyware company Phorm (a process which the British Home Office is suspiciously eager to expedite). Nevertheless, when video streaming is one of those technologies which gain substantially from faster broadband, you'd expect BT to mention that actually their headline speeds exclude video.
In the UK, TV broadcasters BBC and Channel4 offer a very useful 'catch-up' service, allowing viewers to watch TV programs that they might have missed, over the Internet. The BBC's iPlayer service, for example, streams at a number of different qualities from 500kbps, which is okay in a smallish window but not good full screen, to 1.5mbps, which is good, plus 3.2mbps, which gives reasonable HD quality.
Since BT offers broadband speeds 'up to 8mbps' - when you check the detail this is usually reduced to around 5mbps, depending on how close you are to a broadband exchange - this should be an ideal application. Indeed, BT's web page advertising their basic Option 1 package says that "Option 1 is best for ... streaming 25 hours of iPlayer every month". Option 1 has a monthly download limit of 10Gb/month, which is made clear, which is why you can only use it for up to 25 hours of iPlayer each month. But that looks like plenty for normal use - almost 6 hours a week.
Their Option 1 page has small print, inevitably, but nothing to qualify its suitability for video streaming. There is also a long page of Terms & Conditions, which has no apparent problem. From there you can link to another page with their Fair Usage Policy. The high-visibility parts of this are about download limits and a reasonable-sounding explanation of why they throttle peer-to-peer during peak hours. Then, if you keep scrolling down, you reach a section headed "What is BT's policy on video streaming":-
We do not impose any restrictions that affect the viewing quality of services such as BBC iPlayer or Catch Up on Channel4.com or ITV.com, as these stream at up to 800Kbps. However, we do limit the speed of all video streaming to 896Kbps on our Option 1 product, during peak times only, which is between 5pm - midnight every day.
So if you want a broadband package which allows you to watch missed TV programs, or which lets you 'time-shift' them for evenings when you're out, you'd think that this says you're okay, as long as you don't want to do it for more than 6 hours a week. You'd think that ... unless you happened to know that, for a modern computer monitor (or even for a larger laptop), to get good quality pictures you need 1.5mbps. In the evening BT throttles video throughput to half that, less in practice, leading to a sharp drop in quality.
Over the years, as a home PC engineer, I have worked on a lot of problems with BT's broadband products. It seems to me that they charge extra for their name, but don't provide the service to back it up. If someone gets a cut-price package and finds that their service is poor, well ... what do they expect, where do they think the cost savings come from? But when someone goes for the (rather pricey) brand leader, especially when they are not technically-inclined, they expect to pay extra and to get better quality. I don't think BT delivers.