ISPs Hit for Six by Sports Fans

As the nation’s sports fans gear up for a packed summer of sport, ISPs are keeping a beady eye on their bandwidth.Not only have online catch-up services such as the Beeb’s iPlayer, Channel 4’s 4oD and Sky’s Sky Player become increasingly popular but watching ‘live’ content is beginning to take off.Many sports fans stuck behind their desks during Wimbledon, The Golf Open Championship and The Ashes are turning to ‘live’ online coverage to get their fix and as a result ISPs are seeing spikes in traffic.Trefor Davies, Timico’s Chief Technology Officer, has provided an interesting graph in his blog about their network traffic during Wimbledon. Take a look at his blog here.Furthermore it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any easier for ISPs with bandwidth sapping high definition (HD) content beginning to rear its head on the ‘net.