The BBC might nobble the live Internet streams to help DAB

The BBC has previously suggested that they might treat the live and the on-demand streams differently, with the on-demand streams being provided at higher quality than the live streams, so it will be interesting to see what the bit rates the BBC chooses to use for the live streams when their bit rates "significantly improve" later this month. If they do limit the quality in comparison to the on-demand streams, this would be a clear case of the BBC showing extreme bias against using the Internet to deliver live radio, and the reason for them doing this is simply because they want people to listen via DAB instead. Needless to say, I am vehemently opposed to this happening.

The BBC has said that treating the live streams differently would be justifiable because the Internet is the only place that you can find the on-demand streams, whereas the live streams are obviously accessible via FM, DAB and the digital TV platforms as well. However, the fact that the live radio stations are available on other platforms is nowhere near being a legitimate reason to limit the quality on the Internet -- either it is technically and economically feasible to provide them at good quality, or it is not. And the simple fact is that it is obviously possible to provide the live streams at good quality -- i.e. at sufficiently high bit rate levels for whichever audio codec is being used -- because the BBC is now providing the on-demand streams at 128 kbps and 192 kbps MP3, and the highly successful BBC iPlayer TV streams use a bit rate of about 500 kbps. Usage of the BBC iPlayer TV streams has been increasing exponentially -- usage has increased by a staggering 25% every month since it was launched on Christmas Day -- which means that the bandwidth required for the iPlayer TV streams will also be increasing exponentially. Furthermore, the BBC knows full well that usage of the iPlayer TV streams will continue to grow exponentially over the next few years, because brand new successful services such as this always do. Put simply, it would be hypocritical beyond belief if the BBC limits the quality of the live radio streams when the bandwidth required for the iPlayer TV streams is already enormous, and that enormous amount is going to grow exponentially!

The BBC is also planning on launching a live stream for BBC1 (BBC3 already has a live Internet stream, but not many people watch BBC3), which I'd expect will also use a bit rate of about 500 kbps, and with BBC1 being the most-watched UK TV channel this will significantly increase the amount of bandwidth the BBC requires for its Internet TV streams.

The reason why the BBC iPlayer TV catch-up service and live BBC TV channels are feasible is because the cost of bandwidth to content producers such as the BBC has been falling in-line with Moore's Law -- i.e. the cost of bandwidth halves every 18 months or so -- ever since the Internet became popular with consumers. The following table summarises the cost reductions for the major cost elements for Internet bandwidth:

The server computing power and the disk storage per TB were each a few hundred times cheaper in 2005 than they were in 1995, so the "limiting" factor is the cost of Internet bandwidth, which also fell dramatically. The reason why bandwidth costs have fallen so much is that the cost depends on the speed of Internet routers -- the faster the router is the more data it can handle, but the cost of the routers don't increase (if anything they get cheaper), so the cost of bandwidth falls at the same rate that Internet router speeds increase. And, as the following figure shows, the speed of Internet routers has been increasing in-line with Moore's Law since the mid 1980s (because Internet routers use electronic circuits to process the data, and the speed of electronic circuits follow Moore's Law).

The bit rates of the BBC's live radio streams are currently 64 kbps, which is the same bit rate they were using at or towards the beginning of this decade. Yet 102 months have passed since the millenium, so 102 / 18 = 5.67 iterations of Moore's Law have passed since then, which means that Internet bandwidth is 2^5.67 = 51-times cheaper than it was at the beginning of this decade!

The BBC has also said that it plans to reduce the bit rate levels of both the live and the on-demand streams once they switch over to using AAC/AAC+ later this year, which would just be adding salt to the wounds if the BBC does limit the quality of the live streams.

If the BBC goes ahead with limiting the quality of the live Internet radio streams, it would simply show how incredibly biased the BBC is against the live Internet streams and how biased it is in favour of DAB, and this website will continually reiterate this fact -- no matter how long it takes -- until the BBC does the decent thing.

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