The Christmas period may put a lot of stress on internet service providers (ISPs), according to an internet aficionado.

Edd Dawson, the managing director of broadband.co.uk, said that online bargains, Christmas TV and other interests that can be found on the internet during the festive period may result in many connections struggling to process the amount of information demanded by consumers.

He said that iPlayer would be faced with its first major Christmas broadcasting, adding that "with the BBC having by far and away the best programming over the Christmas period, we would not be surprised to see the ISPs suffer as people catch up on what they have missed".

Furthermore, economic conditions may influence the use of shopping websites as people will be more willing to go that extra mile to get the best deal.

According to a recent statement by the BBC, iPlayer had received 237 million viewing requests since its launch up until the end of November.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.