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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.
I don't get the complaint.
Binge On specifically says that certain providers don't count against your data cap at all, and others will be processed to use less data.
Quoted from http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/... :
So what's the headline here? 'Telco provides exactly the service they claim to provide'?
If they were downgrading video when Binge On was turned OFF, then THAT would be news.
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.
Wait...are you saying Mark Zuckerberg isn't real?
I don't recall anyone asking for anything for free.
A big part of the problem here is that many don't offer unlimited data at ANY price, and when you do find someone that does, they often try to bog it down with fine print like this or just flat out cut you off if you use too much of your "unlimited" service.
Now, people don't expect truly "UNLIMITED" data. They can oversell just fine, but the problem is that they're overselling with the thought that a user should only use 0.05% of the actual stated bandwidth that they COULD use. Anyone that dares go above that is "cheating" and abusing the system.
10-15 years ago they could kinda sorta get away with that, but now streaming content is everywhere. People who don't know what bandwidth even is can consume huge chunks of it - completely legally - with Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, Twitch, Sling, Spotify, Pandora, etc.
The telecom companies 10-15 years ago should have realized that those "excessive" users from that era were the future norm and built out their network accordingly. Don't stamp your feet and demand that progress stop.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Just let TMO explain that they're optimizing shareholder value. I think that's the expression.
Fiat Lux.
No matter how you twist it, "unlimited" means unlimited.
If they're not offering a truely unlimited service, they shouldn't be labelling it "unlimited".
The fact that people have come to expect companies lying to them, doesn't make it right.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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?!
I work in marketing and advertising by turns these days (seems like every career trajectory eventually ends up somewhere in this playground, whether near top or bottom of the food chain), so I have to admit guilt here as well.
There is a tendency to operate with the goal of eliminating negative and limiting language because, surprise surprise, positive language tests out well in actual conversion numbers. But there is unquestionably an element of half-truth in it.
"slowed down and degraded to reduce data use" becomes "optimized for mobile"
"we've raised our prices" becomes "we've changed our plans to offer the best possible value to our customers"
"we've removed a bunch of features that raised costs for us" becomes "we've streamlined our service for ease of use"
"we've slashed our support staff" becomes "we're enabling you to find answers more quickly with our self-help area"
"we've eliminated our warranty" becomes "our product is so reliable that it's made warranties obsolete"
and so on.
It's not the actual policy that's the problem. It's that language is Orwellian. Bad becomes good. "Optimization" is supposed to be a good thing. But in this case, the customer's presumption that "optimized" equals "good for me" is actually not true; the word is being used in opposition to its conventional connotation.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
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.
... And it costs me nothing to stream it to my phone. I don't care how they do it. It works great.
Move on to the next 'outrage'.
Honestly, who cares? 1.5mpbs for free streaming video is a long way away from what other providers provide. If the quality is knocked a bit and keeps me from paying up to $15 a gig of data, I'm fine with that. Besides, with 10gig of data per line versus the competitors 4 gigs shared across all the lines, T-mobile is doing just fine. I'm good with SD quality on my ipad. ... for free.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
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.