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T-Mobile is Making Its 'Unlimited' Data Plan Even More Confusing (theverge.com)
When T-Mobile announced "One" plan, little did the company know that people wouldn't like seeing their "unlimited" data plan offer video streaming max out at 480p resolution. The company is making some tweaks to that plan, only to make things more confusing to people. It will now begin selling "HD day passes" for $3 per day, allowing customers to stream in 1080p for 24 hours. The Verge reports: That's simple enough, but here's where it gets really weird: T-Mobile is also offering a plan called T-Mobile One Plus, which, among other benefits, offers unlimited HD day passes. So by subscribing to the plan, you can stream 1080p video all you want every single day -- but only if you go and activate the HD day pass again every single day. Presumably, T-Mobile is hoping you'll forget to activate those passes, or else it would have just lifted the 480p quality limit without this bizarre constraint. Making this even more confusing, T-Mobile originally announced plans to offer an "HD add-on" for the One plan that offered unlimited HD streaming without constraints. That's no longer going to be an option, however, so if you want HD video streaming, you're stuck re-enabling it every day. A T-Mobile rep framed the change as "giving customers more" for the same price, which is true (both cost $25 extra per month), but the new plan also involves the strange new reactivation hurdle.
How can T-Mobile differentiate between these,
as far as I know the connection to youtube is cryptographically secured.
TMobile addressed this in their technical notes: https://www.t-mobile.com/conte...
This requires that video detection signatures be present. T-Mobile will work with content providers to ensure that our networks work together to properly detect video. We will continue to work with content providers as new traffic identification means are needed in the event of future technology enhancement or changes. Use of technology protocols which make detection of video difficult such as https and UDP require additional collaboration with TMobile to enable the video detection.
Presumably you have to work hand-in-hand with TMobile developers to make sure your streams are recognized. I haven't found the technical truth. There was an interesting academic paper: http://david.choffnes.com/pubs..., also outlined here: http://dd.meddle.mobi/bingeon....
How does BingeOn classify traffic? Our prior differentiation work suggested that DPI devices classify applications using regular expression matches on certain
fields of HTTP requests and responses, and SNI fields in TLS handshakes