Independent Test Confirms T-Mobile's Binge On Throttles All Video Content

Compressing the video (even if reduces quality) to get free data is something that consumers can choose. Accepting lower speeds to get free data is something consumers can choose (my cable company offers me different price points based on speeds). The question here is that it is turned on by default and the user has to opt out versus in. I would not opt in but I am sure there are many that would do so to get the free data.

Yep, big problem that it's an opt-out service. If it was opt-in I don't think there would have been as much of a fuss.

net neutrality, etc. etc.

This issue has been Benghazi'd. In other words, a small issue is being made into this major problem that everyone should be stomping their feet over.

Yes, the service should have been set to opt in and I can see this as a problem for less technical people but this is easily fixed. As long as people opt in and inform them of the effects of Binge On, then I don't see this as a big deal at all. I still think this is a pretty amazing service and I'm not even a T-mobile customer.

There's a reason it's "out out" and not "opt in". There's also a reason it throttles all video and not just the whitelisted services, and also a reason it's even enabled by default on unlimited plans. They're obviously making the bet that most people will not bother turning it off. They raised the price on unlimited to $95. This service is basically just a way for T-Mobile to reduce data usage on the network (and get people off unlimited plans) while claiming they're giving you "free video streaming".

I find it a shame that they increased the unlimited price for new customers at the same time Binge On was introduced.

Why not just let Binge On, if successful, encourage people away from unlimited on its own?

T-Mobile, while I might move to them at some point, seems to be slowly heading the way of other carriers now that they are succeeding in getting new users, they are making moves more similar to other carriers as they realize the impact on their network from high GB and unlimited users.

Personally, I’ve been thrilled with the compromise. My passenger binge-watched her favorite TV show on Netflix for the better part of a nine hour commute. The stream was reliable and and the picture quality was satisfactory on my iPhone 6s. Were it a cellular-connected iPad, I might have a different opinion about the video resolution. I can’t imagine what the consumed data would have cost on competing networks. I’m happy with T-Mo’s solution until this country’s cellular providers are able and willing to reduce the cost for their services.

This issue has been Benghazi'd. In other words, a small issue is being made into this major problem that everyone should be stomping their feet over.

Yes, the service should have been set to opt in and I can see this as a problem for less technical people but this is easily fixed. As long as people opt in and inform them of the effects of Binge On, then I don't see this as a big deal at all. I still think this is a pretty amazing service and I'm not even a T-mobile customer.

Compressing the video (even if reduces quality) to get free data is something that consumers can choose. Accepting lower speeds to get free data is something consumers can choose (my cable company offers me different price points based on speeds). The question here is that it is turned on by default and the user has to opt out versus in. I would not opt in but I am sure there are many that would do so to get the free data.

For me as long as I knew in advance that it would be throttled down, I wouldn't care since it was free and doesn't use my data. Then it would be nice to somehow have an easy access toggle so if I needed the speed, I could turn it off. Like maybe a widget from their app.

I use and like T-Mobile, but they should have been upfront about what, exactly, they're doing when you enable it--there's no good reason to obfuscate or lie.

While technically correct that throttling video to 1.5Mbps could screw up streams if there's no low quality version available, since basically any even remotely functional video streaming service in this day and age will have adaptive bitrates, in practice it should work pretty well to get you a lower quality version of the video on just about any site.

The more complicated issue is the net neutrality one. From a net neutrality perspective, it's reasonable for T-Mobile to make the offer that if you basically cap your download speed--effectively agreeing to use less data for the same amount of time spent watching something--that they give you a higher data cap. They're then selling you a max download speed vs. gigabytes of downloaded data internet connection, which is fine.

In contrast, if they say "you get unlimited 1.5Mbit data from X, Y, and Z video providers, but not anybody else", they're giving most favored nation status to particular providers, those providers have a marked advantage over other providers, and the data they're serving is no longer neutral. The ad-absurdium version is that they or some other carrier refuses to give unlimited data to a particular video provider, giving competitors an unfair advantage. So that's not so fine from a neutrality perspective.

The in-between version, which looks like what they're actually doing, is where it gets weird and messy. If they cap all video at 1.5Mbit, from everybody, and offer unlimited data at that speed, based on a user-selectable mode (that is, customers can opt in or out), then they're not technically treating any specific video provider any differently from others, but they are treating different kinds of traffic differently.

I suppose if you phrased it such that "We give the first 3MB of data from any individual server connection to you at 50Mbit, then all subsequent data from that same request at 1.5Mbit, if you want, and in exchange we only will charge the 50Mbit data against the data allocation you pay for", then the effect would be the same--pages and images would go fast, streaming or other very large files would go slower--and you would not technically be treating any particular kind of data differently.

So it just barely skates by, in that you're again paying for a certain amount of speed combined with a high-speed data cap, in the same way that you currently get XGB of LTE-speed data and then unlimited 3G-speed data from T-Mobile, which is okay. It's just a more nuanced version of that. But as soon as you start treating video, explicitly, as different, you hit the neutrality wall.

I find it a shame that they increased the unlimited price for new customers at the same time Binge On was introduced.

Why not just let Binge On, if successful, encourage people away from unlimited on its own?

T-Mobile, while I might move to them at some point, seems to be slowly heading the way of other carriers now that they are succeeding in getting new users, they are making moves more similar to other carriers as they realize the impact on their network from high GB and unlimited users.

It's about making money [USER=49085]@powerbook911[/USER] , when every one starts to cancel there subscriptions and write honest reviews about theme on the internet, they will start boosting there service quality.