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Why Won't T-Mobile Let Us Binge On All Of It?
Previously I had argued that any violations of Net Neutrality could not exist in a setting where the marketplace was (1) transparent and (2) competitive. Under conditions of transparency and competitiveness, if ISP X were providing Internet connections which blocked certain websites, then ISP Y could offer Internet connections at the same speed and the same price but without the browsing restrictions (competitiveness), and if users knew about this (transparency), they would all switch to ISP Y. (The exception would be if a provider blocks high-bandwidth sites in a scarce-bandwidth setting, e.g. when an in-flight wifi blocks Netflix. In this case it's not true that another provider could step in and provide the same service at the same cost with no filtering, so it's not a case of abusing monopoly power.)
So, the argument goes, any prolonged violation of Net Neutrality could only take place either due to lack of transparency (e.g., the board members of a major backbone provider silently blocking their downstream customers from reaching websites whose content they disagreed with -- yes, this really happened), or, lack of competition (the Comcast monopoly throttling BitTorrent and just generally sucking). So, the argument goes, anything that can survive only by exploiting those market-unfriendly conditions is a Bad Thing, and should be prohibited, by rules that require Net Neutrality for all content. Q.E.D.
But T-Mobile's Binge On service would appear to prove me dead wrong. There's no lack of transparency -- they freely admit that they provide unmetered data access only from certain whitelisted video providers (at downgraded speeds so that the video only plays in 480p quality). And there's no lack of competitiveness, with the Big 4 mobile providers pulling out all the stops to steal each other's customers. So why are normal market forces not having the expected result here?
In other words: Assuming that it would cost T-Mobile the same to provide a low-bandwidth unlimited-data connection to the entire Internet, (as opposed to a low-bandwidth unlimited-data connection to just their whitelisted sites), and given that customers would obviously prefer this, why would they not do that?
T-Mobile's official response is that they want to make sure that a video provider's content is "supported" -- so that T-Mobile can detect when video is streaming, and then request for the content provider to downgrade the video quality to 480p so that it uses less bandwidth. (Users still have the option of switching to high-resolution video, but then it counts against their monthly data quota.) This sounds at first like it makes sense, but there's something missing here -- why not just provide the Binge-On connection as a rate-limited connection, and let the streaming website detect the lower speed, and downgrade to lower-quality video automatically? This is in fact what happens with Youtube and Google Play video, if you try to stream from a connection that is only fast enough to support the lower-quality stream. If the connection is rate-limited, it's not possible for the video provider to stuff too much data into the user's connection and cause them to incur overage charges.
So, why not let Binge On users stream from any site, at the low-quality stream rate? In the best-case scenario, the third-party site will detect the user's slow connection and downgrade to low-quality video, as Youtube and Google Play can already do. In the worst-case scenario, if the streaming provider can't downgrade the stream, then it just won't play (unless the user plays the higher-bandwidth version that eats into their data plan) but then the user is no worse off than they are under Binge On's current implementation anyway.
I did hear back from T-Mobile's PR team, but our emails back and forth tended to go in circles. Repeatedly, they told me: The reason we have a whitelist is because those are the providers where we know we can automatically request for them to downgrade to low-res video. And repeatedly, I would say back: I understand that, but why not just provide Binge On as just a simple data pipe at a fixed low speed, and then any video provider will automatically be able to use Binge On if they can detect the low-speed connection and downgrade their video automatically? You can let users switch between a fixed low-speed pipe which doesn't count against the data quota, or a high-bandwidth pipe which does -- but why not let the low-speed pipe access all sites equally?
So, this is a genuinely puzzling question to me. Assuming it would not cost them anything additional for the Binge-On pipe to offer low-speed access to all video sites, why hasn't T-Mobile done this, and why haven't market forces more or less compelled them to do it? Before one of the other Big 3 providers swoops in and offers a low-speed unlimited data plan that works with all websites which are able to downgrade to low-res video?
Perhaps the explanation is that even in the mobile data industry, what looks like cutthroat "competition" is not actually that competitive. T-Mobile is stuck with the reputation of having coverage not quite as good as the other Big 3, so they've carved out niches in other ways -- calling themselves "the Un-carrier" and selling phones at full price without locking users into a contract, or offering pricey but really actually unlimited data plans (something none of the other Big 3 are doing yet). In their new niche, "unlimited data for $60/month as long as you can live with low-res video", there is currently no competition, and hence no competitive penalty for not broadening the service to include all video streaming sites. Can you think of a better answer?
If that's the case, then competitive forces may work, albeit slowly, as the other Big Three eventually offer some form of "unlimited data for low-speed content," and some of them will offer low-speed unmetered access to the entire Internet, and then all of them will have to follow suit in order to remain competitive. In the meantime, Binge On customers can get their favorite shows on Hulu with no data overages, but cannot do the same thing on Google Play. This will annoy and even outrage some people, but it's also a reminder that "market forces" do not necessarily solve the problems that Net Neutrality legislation is intended to solve -- at least, not very quickly.
Why not post the actual requirements for content providers. http://www.t-mobile.com/conten...
Damnit, I clicked the article. Now Slashdot editors will think we enjoy Bennett's posts because they get a lot of clicks.
I'm sorry, but I have to do something to offset this:
Bennett Haselton posts suck.
I hope that's enough.
There's nothing particularly nefarious about it, and no kick backs - T-Mobile have been clear no content provider is paying them for this, and others are welcome to join.
The deal is "If you watch video via our compressed system, we'll make it free" combined with "If you let us recompress your video, we'll let our users watch it for free." That's it.
T-Mobile wants to compress it, not let the content provider decide what bit rate to do it at, because this is about their network, not just one user on it.The fact a publisher might be capable of sending 1Mbps to a user doesn't mean this is in the best interests of everyone using the same tower as that user.
So, T-Mobile makes the offer: "Hey providers, if you work with us and send your video in a way that means we can intercept and compress it further, we'll let you be a part of this scheme." It's reasonable. It doesn't violate net neutrality (it's available to Amazon and YouTube, they just choose not to use it - be it for political, financial, or technical reasons), and it's probably a good idea.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You can probably get your subsonic server through their process. They have five requirements, all reasonable:
All in all, reasonable rules.
. Full rules
Your ad here. Ask me how!
You must be young enough not to remember this - cellular service in the US was historically segmented in exactly the way you describe.
In fact, to prevent monopolies, the existing Baby Bell regional phone companies got licenses for "wireline" based systems that utilized the existing telephone system infrastructure, and there was spectrum allocated for a single competing "non-wireline" service that used microwave repeaters between towers as the competition. These were labeled the "A" system and the "B" system. You wanted cellular service? You had exactly two choices. Wireline from the phone company, or non-wireline from the other guys. Most phones could work on either, but not both simultaneously (this was soon rectified as the carriers realized the potential for roaming fees between local carriers.)
When I started selling phones out of high school 20 years ago, our coverage area was less than half the state - driving 100 miles to the next big city would get you "roaming charges" of 99 cents per minute, plus long distance charges if you were making a "not-local-to-where-your-billing-area-is" call. This caused problems especially for people who lived on the edge between two areas, because their phones would (per design of the "cell" in "cellular") switch between one tower and the next without warning. I had people coming in complaining that they only ever used their phone at home (too rural for a landline) and would get half their calls on the roaming network. Eventually phones came with network locking possibilities to prevent roaming accidentally, but that compounded the problem since some users had to manually reprogram their phone for roaming each time they went to the post office. They demanded simplicity.
Eventually, these problems came to a head and the market demanded "no roaming fees" for increasingly large areas, and we could finally get all of Arizona as one big home calling area. (But watch out if you lived near the Colorado river!) Over time all the regional carriers decided to make their own networks one giant "no roaming" footprint, and our local calling map spanned the entire Southwest U.S. Hooray, you could now drive to the next state and not incur roaming charges!...as long as you were on your own service provider's towers. You still had to pay roaming fees if you went onto a neighboring network, though.
Then came digital networks - spectrum for AT&T (the long distance company, not the regional Baby Bells) allowed them to become one of the first NATIONWIDE providers, and people flocked to their system, even as spotty as it was. The writing was on the wall, and nationwide calling was going to be the norm.
As a result of this new nationwide threat, next came the consolidations. The Bell companies started banding together (the local one to me at the time went from US West Cellular to a multi-state Airtouch to what is now nationwide Verizon) and the non-wireline companies started either building out their own digital networks or merging with their neighbors like Verizon. And thusly "free nationwide roaming" became possible for the first time for all carriers.
Now it's so natural to assume your phone will work everywhere, that to fall back to regionally segmented pricing would probably introduce many new layers of cost and complexity to billing services that have since been thoroughly optimized for national use. I'd wager that many people have never even heard the term "roaming". What you're describing is not going to happen on any meaningful scale, if at all.
Getting your op-eds accepted is not based on karma as much as writing interesting columns in your journal and submitting them.
Content providers are NOT subsidizing the bandwidth. T-Mobile will let any content provider participate, and they don't have to pay anything to get on the list of approved providers. The requirements are pretty straight forward:
1) You have to identify the data to T-Mobile as streaming video data.
2) You must use adaptive bitrate technology
3) If you make changes to your streaming methods you have to give T-Mobile a heads up before those changes go live to ensure you still meet the requirements.
4) You have to be able to tell T-Mobile when you are sending non-video content so they can count that against user data caps.
5) You can only stream content legally (proper licenses to content, etc.)
6) Don't violate their trademarks
You don't have to pay, and T-Mobile will work with you directly to ensure you can meet their requirements. Once you've been approved, you're all set. No other requirements and you don't have to pay them anything.
Source: http://www.t-mobile.com/conten...