British Telecom (BT), the behemoth telecom company and one of the largest communications companies in the world want to charge video websites for carrying their content. “We can’t give the content providers a completely free ride and continue to give customers the [service] they want at the price they expect,” said John Petter, managing director of BT Retail’s consumer business in a Financial Times interview.

Petter added that content providers were “developing very profitable business models” with products that had free use of BT’s networks, but at the same time, adding significant costs to BT’s business. BT is now throttling consumers’ bandwidth during peak hours “in order to optimize the experience for all customers.”

Whether this means BT will seek payments from the like of Google and BBC is another matter but what the issue does bring up is video demands are growing exponentially online. Regardless of whether it’s streaming or real-time, new business models will likely develop, which considers the amount of data and video that we use.

In a recent report Cisco reports that IP traffic will quintuple from 2008-2013, at which point video will make up over 90 percent of Internet traffic. Here are some of the Cisco forecasts below:

Real-time video is growing in importance. By 2013, Internet TV will be over 4 percent of consumer Internet traffic, and ambient video will be 8 percent of consumer Internet traffic. Live TV has gained substantial ground in the past few years: globally, P2P TV is now slightly over 7 percent of overall P2P traffic at over 200 petabytes per month.

Video communications traffic growth is accelerating. Though still a small fraction of overall Internet traffic, video over instant messaging and video calling are experiencing high growth. Video communications traffic will increase tenfold from 2008 to 2013.

Almost 64 percent of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2013. Mobile video will grow at a CAGR of 150 percent between 2008 and 2013.

Globally, mobile data traffic will double every year through 2013, increasing 66x between 2008 and 2013. Mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 131 percent between 2008 and 2013, reaching over 2 exabytes per month by 2013.

Hot off the tales of the HD summit last week in New York, I was bemused to see a BBC reporter sitting in the very seat I occupied in Central Park last week using the free Wi-Fi connection. While I could still use googletalk there (and overcome the VoIP challenges of a poor Wi-Fi connection) her report from Central Park was interesting because she might have as well been in rural Northern England and got a better connection.

BBC’s Michelle Fleury report was part of a larger article on broadband speeds available in member countries of the OECD. Fleury reported on how the US’s free market leaves it with slower web access than other countries. As well documented Japan, South Korea and the Northern European countries lead the world in broadband access, while the US saunters behind countries such as New Zealand, Czech Republic and Austria.

While the US broadband has been driven by free-market development, it is generally more expensive and slower than most other OECD countries.  Now that $7 billion in US tax-payers funds has been earmarked for broadband development  – the FCC will be responsible for rolling out faster and hopefully cheaper broadband.

Broadband networks are fundamental for economic and social development in every country. These networks serve as communication and transaction platforms, which are as crucial as other infrastructures such as roads, rails and airways.

At the HD summit, the mobile operator and Internet service provider, Orange (France Telecom) pointed out that they provide superior broadband speeds for 30 Euro per month – tax included. An equivalent broadband speed here in the US (50Mbps) costs between $90- $150 per month.

While this BBC report is dismaying, I’m an optimist and believe broadband speeds will increase in the US and with it the push for HD voice.