With news that the total number of videos viewed online in the UK increased by 47% in the year ended April 2009, there is great concern that the ever-growing demand for online media and online videos in particular could see broadband connection charges increase. While Google (via its YouTube subsidiary) is by far and away the most popular with 2.4 billion videos viewed out of the annual 4.7 billion, the BBC iPlayer is gaining ground.
Governments and broadband providers across the UK, and across the world, have long been warning of the risks of increased online video demand which is stretching many broadband networks to the limit. If this rate of growth continues then ISPs around the world will need to invest substantial sums of money into their networks which will ultimately see a rise in the cost to the consumer.
There had been a move towards charging the owners of YouTube and the iPlayer for the extra bandwidth they are using but this would probably be very difficult to put in place. Whether we might see the introduction of charges for the more popular services, or some kind of pay-as-you-go broadband service for online videos, remains to be seen but changes need to be made and very quickly.