Exclusive: Broadcasters 'should pay' for online TV

Tiscali director of television Simon Hunt has told Digital Spy that broadcasters should pay for the online distribution of their content because they already pay distribution charges for other platforms.

Hunt said that consumers will increasingly want to view TV content over the internet and so this should be viewed as another distribution platform that must be paid to use.

"The example I always come back to is the BBC and satellite. The BBC spends a lot of money on Sky so we can watch its programmes at home," he explained.

"It also spends a lot of money putting them on DTT so they can be picked up, but this is just another form of digital distribution; so why is this free of charge?"

Jody Haskayne, Tiscali's director of public relations, called the recent row between the BBC and BT over speed throttling of video streaming on its lowest tier of broadband service "unfortunate" but said that a conversation about how online distribution is paid for needed to happen.

Haskayne said that people are now starting to realise that "someone has to pay" for VOD usage, whether that may be for the "content or the bandwidth".

However, she pointed out that debate on this issue must go ahead on a collaborative basis, "rather than one side and the other".

"I think Canvas will only make it a necessity even more because people are just going to buy a box off the shelf, they are not buying the service from the ISP, or buying something from BBC or Channel 4, they are just buying a box and they expect everything to come with it," she explained.

"So it is really important that those conversations are being had and the economics are understood."