With the iPhone’s music capabilities and Safari browser, you’d think there’d be lots of music sites launching iPhone-friendly versions letting you stream tunes to your iPhone. However, it seems there may be a problem here in the UK preventing such services.
It’s been exposed by the BBC’s Radio Labs blog, in a post about the Beeb’s iPhone podcast site (which we’ve covered before). After complaints that some UK users couldn’t play the streaming podcasts, the BBC investigated, and discovered that the problem was related to users trying to stream over O2’s EDGE network:
“After a lot of emails and rooting around for info, it seems O2 have a proxy server that replaces content on the fly to speed up web-over-EDGE performance. This includes downgrading images, and removing any references to Mp3’s - hence the lack of a play button. In the States, there’s no such proxy, so although its slower, US users get the full playback experience.”
Ouch. It works fine over Wi-Fi, but the news isn’t good for Music 2.0 sites looking to target UK iPhone users when they’re not within range of a hotspot.
(via BBC Radio Labs)
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