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Sprint Is Throttling Microsoft's Skype Service, Study Finds (fortune.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the caught-red-handed dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Sprint has been slowing traffic to Microsoft's internet-based video chat service Skype, according to new findings from an ongoing study by Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts. Among leading U.S. carriers, Sprint was the only one to throttle Skype, the study found. The throttling was detected in 34 percent of 1,968 full tests -- defined as those in which a user ran two tests in a row -- conducted between Jan. 18 and Oct. 15. It happened regularly, and was spread geographically across the U.S. Android phone users were more affected than owners of Apple Inc.'s iPhones. The finding is particularly troubling because Skype relies on Sprint's wireless internet network, but the app also provides a communication tool that competes with Sprint's calling services, the researcher added. "If you are a telephony provider and you provide IP services over that network, then you shouldn't be able to limit the service offered by another telephony provider that runs over the internet," David Choffnes, one of the researchers who developed the app used to conduct the survey, said. "From a pure common sense competition view, it seems directly anti-competitive."

33 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is perfectly legal now. Thanks Pai.

    1. Re: Well by tysonedwards · · Score: 5, Funny

      If only there were a law that forced telecommunications services to be regarded as a common carrier and as such treat said transit as neutrally, we wouldnâ(TM)t be having this discussion.

      --
      Thirty four characters live here.
    2. Re: Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're going to try to blame a Trump appointee's actions on Obama? Pathetic. Republicans ran out of ideas a long time ago, but you could at least put forth a little effort.

    3. Re: Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Something....something...Tea Billy Caucus...

    4. Re:Well by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1, Informative

      Ajit Pai was appointed by President Obama. We cannot vote against him since he's out of office.

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    5. Re: Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Obama appointed Pai because the rules forced him to appoint a Republican due to two Democrat appointees already serving. It was the Republicans that put him forward as a candidate (and as a Verizon shill), and it was Trump that appointed him chair.

    6. Re: Well by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      We've never in the past needed legislation for every minutiae of regulation. It was assumed that the legislation was there to enable the regulatory bodies or to provide guidelines and that the regulatory bodies would then faithfully and honestly conduct the business that they had been set up to do. History did not prepare us for the possibility of a slash-and-burn administration intent upon the destruction of all regulations, since this had never been the stated goal of any political party.

    7. Re:Well by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      And Obama appointed him because he was required to have a political mix on the committee and could not have only Democrats.

      Of course, part of the problem comes from appointing industry insiders, and it's a problem that's been around for a long time and is hard to resolve. Part of the cause here is that if you want experts in a certain area then those experts are inevitably industry insiders. Ie, if you want knowledgeable banking regulators then your pool of candidates are going to be bankers, which leads to the inevitable state that bankers are policing themselves. This is why we have so much "regulatory capture" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture).

    8. Re: Well by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      If regulations are not thorough enough, then companies will find loopholes that allow them to violate the spirit of the regulation while technically still complying with the terms.

      Laws and regulations are like any complex system, except lawyers are paid a lot of money to find and exploit flaws in the law, whereas people who find such flaws in software (ie basically doing the same thing) are branded criminals.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    9. Re:Well by mcmonkey · · Score: 1

      I don't understand why the parent comment is currently modded 'funny.' It's all that really needs to be said on the subject.

      As a consumer, it's nice to know which providers are throttling which services. But as news, this ain't it. From the summary:

      "If you are a telephony provider and you provide IP services over that network, then you shouldn't be able to limit the service offered by another telephony provider that runs over the internet," David Choffnes, one of the researchers who developed the app used to conduct the survey, said. "From a pure common sense competition view, it seems directly anti-competitive."

      I think most folks in /. agree they "shouldn't be able to," but shoulds got nothing to do with it.

      And from a pure common sense competition view, if a business has a chance to put their competition at a disadvantage, it seems pretty obvious to expect they will.

    10. Re: Well by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      In the last 24 years, the Democrats have only been in a position to pass legislation for two of them. They spent those two years trying to reform health care. While they ultimately failed to produce a health care reform that worked, you can't blame them for concentrating on preventing people from dying over preventing Sprint from lowering the bandwidth available during peak periods to certain types of service.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    11. Re: Well by mikael · · Score: 1

      There were multiple factions all pushing to get what they wanted; Doctors and hospitals wanting to charge what they liked - some were barred due to their high prices with no obvious improvement in quality of outcome or treatment. Insurance companies wanted to charge what they liked. Those with existing insurance wanted to keep their rates exactly as they were with no loss of cover. Those without insurance wanted all conditions to be covered, even the rare expensive ones.
      Nobody was going to budge from their position.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  2. Neutrality of networks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wow, it's almost like there should be some sort of regulation to prevent a carrier from discriminating against traffic or services. You know, to enforce then neutrality of networks or something like that. Maybe we should all contact the FCC to suggest this:)

    1. Re:Neutrality of networks! by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Such laws require much political cooperation and so are very slow to come into existence. But congress DOES enact such legislation. The trouble is that the telecommunication industry and market have changed much faster than congress can keep up. The previous congressionaal FCC legislation on this issue was when the internet was relatively new and the mobile phone sector was small. The bill is very long (well, not long for a bill but long for an average citizen to read, parse, and understand), and covers all sorts of minutiae that seem outdated.

      This used to work well for telephone service, because telephone service changed very slowly over the decades.

  3. Re:It's not throttling by Dan667 · · Score: 1

    skype is also dogshit. It is like sprint and skype are trying to see who can spiral into new heights of dogshit the highest.

  4. Re:It's not throttling by nevermindme · · Score: 1

    A Cellular site is never going to be the 100Gbits/sec of cheap around the neighborhood fibers...the bandwidth is not there to be bought at any price, simple physics. Network operators degrading real-time video from other vendors to sustain their revenue model. NEVER BEFORE YOU CRY.

    Oh come on, if anyone wants to provide a service that chews a significant portion of a cell sector, such as a 2-4 Mbits/sec of bandwidth. Take a few thousand CPU cycles and encode it in a way so it is not identifiable to the transport as your revenue model (make it look like a SDN, bring it to the client 1000 different paths ) or partner up with the carrier with a trade they want.

    At some point AWS, AZURE, whoever emerges as SDN #1 and AKI all will need to pony up a bit of cash for priority on all but the most empty 4G or the much smaller 5G cells.

  5. In other news... by Nutria · · Score: 1

    66% of Skype calls were not throttled.

    Why were only some calls throttled? Enquiring minds want to know!!!

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    1. Re:In other news... by kiviQr · · Score: 2

      Maybe it got throttled when bandwidth of the cell tower was limited.

    2. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This.

      I used to work for Sprint on cell tower performance. Each sector has limited bandwidth. If a sector has a high number of subscribers or if traffic exceeds a bandwidth threshold, they may throttle services. This can be to ensure all customers have lower latency, or to prioritize latency sensitive applications.

      If you had a wide open pipe, without throttling, bandwidth hogs would ruin things for everyone else. Throttling isn't always a bad thing.

    3. Re:In other news... by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Beyond that, these sorts of external tests have absolutely no way to tell the difference between a congested uplink somewhere in the specific network path between Sprint and Skype versus "throttling." It's entirely plausible, and fairly likely, that no targeted throttling whatsoever is even occurring.

      You compare the speed of straight Skype vs Skype over a VPN. If the VPN is consistently faster, then Skype is being throttled. If they're both consistently slow, then its network congestion.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    4. Re:In other news... by piojo · · Score: 1

      To be rigorous, you would also want to compare it to Skype over an uncommon obfuscated protocol, and you would want to compare it to other VOIP programs. This would rule out VPNs being prioritized and all VOIP services being deprioritized. Though I don't mean to imply that that type of prioritization is okay.

      --
      A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
    5. Re:In other news... by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Its how you react to the slow down, who you blame. If it is intermittently slow and useless, would you blame the backbone, your ISP or the app. So they adjust the fucking with traffic to target the app, all the time and your a likely to blame the network, some of the time and you blame the app. They can also do disconnects, hey they can interrupt the call and serve an ad, they can crap all over it now, any way they want to.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    6. Re:In other news... by Nutria · · Score: 1

      That's a who lot of effort, to what benefit for Sprint? (They don't compete with Skype, after all.)

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    7. Re:In other news... by dryeo · · Score: 1

      You're right that the more comparisons the better.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  6. Do ceullular companies still make money off calls? by hawguy · · Score: 1

    The finding is particularly troubling because Skype relies on Sprint's wireless internet network, but the app also provides a communication tool that competes with Sprint's calling services, the researcher added.

    Do cellular companies still make money off of phone calls? It seems hard to find a non-unlimited calling plan these days, and I doubt I make even 30 minutes of calls a month

  7. Re:They get what they want by youngone · · Score: 4, Informative

    The free market probably would fix this.
    Fortunately for you Americans, your government has been paid by the ISPs to never have to deal with a free market ever again.
    Oh, and you also have to subsidise their network upgrades.
    It's a way of keeping profits private while socialising the expenses.

  8. Skype quality by psergiu · · Score: 1

    Well ... Skype itself seems to do some self-throttling.
    Most my Video Skype calls, no matter the network, are like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    --
    1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
  9. Re:They get what they want by dryeo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's how the market works. Businesses are free to buy what they can afford, including government rules to help their bottom line.
    At that it is probably inevitable in a market as the market rewards the most efficient, and it is more efficient to buy laws then to actually produce a better product.
    In theory democracy could counteract this, but you need a functioning democracy.

    --
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  10. Re:It's not throttling by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    There is something worse than Skype for Business?

  11. Does anyone know a good site for testing this? by FeelGood314 · · Score: 1

    My ISP's upstream provider (Rogers) is blocking my SFTP so I know they are doing deep packet inspection. Is SFTP the only traffic they are messing with? I would like to know.

    *It is quite possible that SFTP is an exception. To a deep packet inspection appliance a new encrypted TCP stream is created on a port the appliance knows nothing about. Almost every other TCP stream can be classified by the server port or by the initial handshake.

  12. Re:They get what they want by youngone · · Score: 1

    Wow.
    I wasn't thinking of it in quite that way, but you're right.

  13. Playing fair by strikethree · · Score: 1

    Microsoft has NEVER wanted to play fair. Surely they are not now crying about Sprint not playing fair?

    Nope. Microsoft is not crying about this. They don't even care. They know that an uneven playing field makes it harder for newcomers so they are happy even though this is hurting them. It is better for Skype to never make a profit or even just die than to let the playing field be fair.

    Note that it is not Microsoft that noticed or said anything about the throttling.

    --
    "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
  14. Re:It's not throttling by nevermindme · · Score: 1

    They obviously did not throttle you...the carrier for some reason wanted your boss specifically to die a horrible business death where he could not make contact for out of the great rural sprint/nextel black hole of 2013.