According to a range of news sites, BT has been accused of throttling speeds to sites such as BBC iPlayer and YouTube during peak hours, on their option 1 internet package, without placing a clear warning to users.
Many customers have recently complained that speed limits have been put in place for sites that use video streaming during peak times. According to BBC News, users of the Option 1 BT Internet package will find video streaming site speeds limited from 5pm right through to midnight.
I personally don’t like it when internet companies throttle speeds, but BT certainly isn’t the only company that does this. I use Tiscali as my ISP and I am most certainly throttled for high demand websites between peak hours. BT definitely is not the only company to be blamed for speed throttling.
I do think that ISPs need to do something about speed throttling – I really hate it and think it is very unfair. Most ISPs claim that they only throttle to make sure that everyone gets a fair share of the available internet bandwidth during peak time, but if ISPs can claim 8MB broadband and make you pay for it, then 8MB is what you should get all the time. If ISPs can’t provide 8MB broadband during peak time, then they should either upgrade the stone-age copper cabling we have now or just not advertise 8MB broadband in the first place. Instead, they just rip us off, advertising features they simply cant provide.