iView from ABC is being held back by download caps

The newly released internet broadcasting service iView is currently being held back by service limitations that both the internet industry and ABC are working towards overcoming.

The director of the ABC’s innovation group, Ian Carroll has said that the quota limitations for downloading that are available to the Australian broadband market are holding the iView back. He added that the severe excess charges for downloads frightened internet users into avoiding the service.

Mr Carroll said “We’re very happy with where iView has gone but ultimately its place in the market place is limited by the way in which the ISP industry operates its data caps. The success it’s had is with those ISPs that make it easily available to their customers. Where’s there’s a prohibitive data cap on the use of video iView hasn’t been nearly as successful.”

Adelaide-headquartered Internode and Perth-based iiNet are just a few of the ISPs that currently don’t charge excess fees for user that go on the iView site. In an attempt to increase the potential audience for the iView service the industry and the national broadcaster were working together closely said Mr Carroll.

He advised “A lot of ISPs don’t have the sort of equipment that can easily identify one bit of content from another bit of content and we’ve had to look at providing iView in a form that is easy for the ISPs to pick the content up separate it from their charging mechanisms or their data caps.”

The ability to use the national broadcasters’ iView service without being charged excess broadband costs would soon be available to more Australians he said. “iiNet offers it now and in the coming weeks there will be more but until the testing of it is finished with each one I’m not in a position to announce which other companies are coming on board,” said Mr Carroll.

The concept of users being able to use the service outside their standard regime of bandwidth charging is, however, being resisted by major telco who have their own content strategies.

Access to iView being un-metered was something that Telstra said it no plans to do at the moment and Optus advised that allowing users to access iView outside of its data cap limits was something it hadn’t decided on yet. A spokeswoman for Optus said “We are always looking at emerging technologies and have nothing to confirm at this stage.”