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EFF: T-Mobile "Binge On" Is Just Throttling of All Data (eff.org)
onedobb writes: Tests confirm that when Binge On is enabled, T-Mobile throttles all HTML5 video streams to around 1.5Mps, even when the phone is capable of downloading at higher speeds, and regardless of whether or not the video provider enrolled in Binge On. This is the case whether the video is being streamed or being downloaded—which means that T-Mobile is artificially reducing the download speeds of customers with Binge On enabled, even if they're downloading the video to watch later. It also means that videos are being throttled even if they're being watched or downloaded to another device via a tethered connection.
Having a service where you are cheating customers by not revealing a major part of how a service works is a serious problem. Countries where people are more trusting of other people, corporations and their governments do better economically, and are better by a variety of other metrics (such as Gini coefficient). While there are serious correlation v. causation issues here, it is likely that a big part of this is that people are more willing to engage in transactions with people or institutions they aren't directly familiar with. See e.g. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/trust-wealth_n_851519.html, http://www.pewglobal.org/2008/04/15/where-trust-is-high-crime-and-corruption-are-low/, https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/10/how-trusting-are-european-nations/, and http://www.oecd.org/forum/the-cost-of-mistrust.htm. This means that large corporations bilking customers is damaging to all of us at a large scale.
The majority of Americans believe that Satan is a living, breathing beaing who walks around the place, so... this is way down the list of priorities.
No sig today...
Well, to begin with, can you please advise what "optimization" is taking place?
Stating that the stream is "optimized for mobile" implies something more than just rate-limiting the video stream.
Oops. I'm sorry, they meant "optimized for T-Mobile" not "optimized for the customer."
Just let TMO explain that they're optimizing shareholder value. I think that's the expression.
Fiat Lux.
No, because there's also things like data rate caps.
In the landline world, ISPs sell multiple tiers of connection speed. If you want a faster connection you pay more money. Simple.
In the mobile world, this never really caught on, and instead they charge based on link utilization. This results in a metric that makes no sense for customers - most apps don't give an adequate explanation of how much data they use on average and I'm sure, with all the the million analytics suites they apparently need, that they don't want to or outright cannot provide accurate data usage figures for their software. Network speed is comparatively easy to understand, measure, and analyze.
T-Mobile appears to be trying to hack speed tiers back into the mobile pricing model by giving customers the option to reduce bandwidth in favor of it not counting against their link utilization.. which would be fine except for the fact that they will only discount certain video services despite this technology working on all of them for as long as you have it enabled. This appears to be a blatant net neutrality violation, then - the technology clearly works everywhere, why not just let us use it on any qualifying video streaming service?!
that many don't offer unlimited data at ANY price
Boohoo. Pay for what you use. Do you demand the power company give you unlimited electricity or the hydro company unlimited water? Bandwidth is a finite resource at any given time.
First off. I *DO* pay for what I use. On top of a plan for unlimited data, I'm paying special rates simply for having a smartphone that can actually USE that data. Moreover, the plan price just got jacked for ADDITIONAL money, as it's a grandfathered "unlimited" plan that's no longer sold. As such, the unlimited plan is significantly MORE expensive than a metered plan. Stuff like this throttling mean they're overselling and expecting people to use less than one percent of their total possible bandwidth. And anyone who uses more is "cheating". Regardless of how much they pay.
And your analogy is fucked up.
Sure, maybe I can't pull 1.21 jiggawatts, but I run a business out of my home and use roughly 2.5x the power consumed by my neighbors. At no point does the power company sit there and say "between times A and B we're going to limit your power consumption to only what your neighbors, who aren't home and thus not really using much power, consume during the day..."
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Good grief. Any society depends on cooperation and sharing of resources. You can manufacture outrage that your "unlimited" plan is actually limited, and demand that your carrier provide you with your own dedicated cell tower everywhere, for the "agreed upon price" but that's bullshit. What's more you know that's bullshit.
Of all the carriers, TMobile is about the most generous with bandwidth per dollar, and most reasonable with its terms of use.
Seriously, there are greater abuses out there.
It's actually impossible to offer unlimited data. This would require infinite bandwidth.
A restaurant can offer "all-you-can-eat", but they probably can't offer "unlimited food", because food is a limited resource.
As far as I can tell, "unlimited data" in the world of cellular means that they will never cut your data off or charge you more money for going over a certain amount of data. There will always be a limit to your bandwidth whether artificial or from physics.
People just need to get used to the idea that datarate is as important a spec as gigabytes when getting a data plan.
It's easy to offer "unlimited" data plans if the data rate is low enough.