iPlayer downloads reach 75 million

According to the BBC’s latest usage figures, its iPlayer catch-up TV service has now hit the 75 million download mark.

The controversial iPlayer service streams TV programmes directly to a user’s computer, and is proving hugely popular with everyone except the ISPs.

The extra traffic created by the service is proving a problem from the ISPs, with some of them suggesting that the BBC should help to foot the bill for the additional bandwith usage.

According to the BBC’s latest figures, which were announced at the Google Zeitgeist 2008 event in London, iPlayer was used to download 21 million programmes in April alone, a 20 per cent jump from March.