This morning, T-Mobile and its CEO, John Legere, had a whole bunch things to say about their Binge On video service. Not only did they announce a handful of new partners for Binge On, but Legere also addressed all of the recent “throttling” talk surrounding their “optimized” video streams.
Before we get into the throttling fun, the list of new partners includes A&E, Lifetime, HISTORY, PlayStation Vue, Tennis Channel Anywhere, FuboTV, Kidoodle TV, Curiosity Stream, Fandor, Newsy, ODK Media, Lifetime Movie Club, and FYI. There should be 14 in total that went live today, which brings Binge On’s partner list up to 38.
OK, now to the interesting stuff.
A couple of weeks ago, YouTube and Google reached out to the Wall Street Journal because they had concerns about T-Mobile’s Binge On. Their claim was that T-Mobile was throttling or downgrading all video traffic on their network, not just for services that were participating in Binge On. YouTube, in case you were wondering, is not participating and was seeing their videos play at the lower 480p Binge On rate by default, almost as if they were a partner.
T-Mobile didn’t exactly respond to these accusations in a timely manner. Instead, their PR teams talked to sites like ours to clarify that they didn’t believe this was throttling and that it was more like optimizing.
Then to start this week, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) released a report that suggested Binge On was 100% throttling and that the FCC should launch an investigation into it because they believe there might be net neutrality issues. Well, this report and the headlines it grabbed were finally enough to get John Legere to respond.
In the video below, you can hear what he has to say.
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His basic argument is that this is a great service for a lot of people, because it doesn’t use up their data bucket and it doesn’t cost anyone anything. Legere doesn’t see how anyone can complain about it. He also mentions that people can turn this off whenever they want. And look, if you try and see it in its simplest terms, which is how Legere tries to explain it, then yeah, it does seem like a great service.
Here’s the problem, though. If YouTube (or any other video service) doesn’t want their service to be a part of Binge On, then T-Mobile shouldn’t be downgrading anything played on YouTube. Plain and simple. Outside of that, understand that Binge On is turned on by default, so some people may not know that all of their video streaming is being downgraded to “DVD” quality of 480p. That’s an issue because, well, most of us feel that services like Binge On should be “opt-in” not “opt-out.” Customers should choose out of the gate if they want to participate in something like this.
Again, I don’t think anyone is arguing with John Legere that video being streamed at a lower quality for free, isn’t normally a bad thing. But in the end, T-Mobile shouldn’t get to decide and be the gatekeeper in an “opt-out” scenario.






Binge on is a great service for probably about 90% of T-Mobile customers. All these these hyper-negative reactions to it’s introduction are weirdly over exaggerated. If you don’t want it, take the 2 minutes to opt-out (I have unlimited data so I did this, took less than 2 minutes). The rest of your fellow customers are benefiting from it and this service sets T-Mobile apart as a leader in providing value for their customers.
As a carrier, they should flow all similar traffic alike, partnerships aside. (VoIP traffic? Pass it similarly to other VoIP traffic etc.) The best of intentions aside, Net neutrality is a slippery slope and the issue here is the precedence being established; this is why the EFF would be concerned (rightfully so imo). Read about Net Neutrality concerns if you’d like to know more.
All video service’s should be apart of Bing on if its all going to be throttled.
I actually like Binge On. However, it should be definitely be opt-in and not opt-out.
#ThrottleGate #BingeOnGate #SleazyUsedCarSalesMan
Just a bunch of cry babies here. Don’t see it as a big deal. I have 4 lines on my account. Two have unlimited and two have only 30 mb of lte. The two that don’t have unlimited are allowed to use Netflix and other video apps when they are on cell data and not buffer. Something they couldn’t ever do before binge on because I’m cheap and only pay for 30 mb of day for them. Felt it was pretty easy to login to mytobile and opt out on my unlimited plans
Sooo, I am watching YouTube in 720p on 4G LTE with my Binge On turned on. Am I the only one this is working correctly for? Unfortunately I can’t verify the quality on Netflix or Crackle as being 480p though, there doesn’t seem to be a quality setting.
So what does the data capping and throttling mean for vz udp’ers?
not sure what your comment means there is no throttling or caps for verizon unlimited users.
I didn’t think it was a big deal to turn it off. I tried it for awhile and shut it off and I am on unlimited if I wasn’t I would probably leave it on. When I wanted better video oh I have WiFi.
Can you turn it off in your online account, or do you have to call a rep?
Online account
Kellex, did you miss linking to the DL story that discusses the PR response of “oh, it’s not throttling, it’s optimizing”, or did you just not report it?
We certainly don’t want DL to turn into a mouthpiece for the industry, but reporting even an attempt to justify this would have been useful. As it is, as you say, by making this opt-out, this really does stink of throttling, which I suppose T-Mobile would spin as “involuntary optimization”.
It’s clear that DroidLife is on payroll from competitor networks like AT&T and Verizon, otherwise this article would be written from a journalist standpoint, not a biased one. I come here to get facts and information, not biased opinion or hear-say (well this other website did tests..yadda yadda). Ugh. Just as bad as BGR now.
The article is written nearly the same way as it has been reported on other sites:
http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/01/07/in-full-used-car-salesman-mode-john-legere-says-google-attacked-binge-on-throttling-to-get-into-the-news/
http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/07/t-mobile-ceo-calling-binge-on-throttling-is-bullshit/#confab-comment-25752520
http://www.androidcentral.com/bingeon-terrible-purpose-and-john-legere-needs-stop
Those are just three that are similar in tone and prose to this article. So, are they all being paid by competing carriers?
As for the “biased opinion or hear-say (well this other website did tests..yadda yadda)” bit, I don’t think the EFF would be classified as just an “other website”. They tested BingeOn and reported their results. I don’t quite see how that is hear-say at all.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t-mobiles-bingeon-optimization-just-throttling-applies
It’s Kellen’s site, of course he can be opinionated on here. They deliver facts, but also put in their own opinions; it doesn’t mean you have to agree with them or like them. Yeah he gets a little angsty sometimes, but I’d rather have him put some heart and soul into his writing than be an indifferent robot.
“If YouTube (or any other video service) doesn’t want their service to be a part of Binge On, then T-Mobile shouldn’t be downgrading anything played on YouTube. Plain and simple.”
Even if that’s what the customer chooses? Seems like the final word should belong right where it is now, in the hands of the consumer.
If the customer chooses to have that happen that is fine, but in this case TMobile has made the choice for the customer and the customer would have to opt out of it. Basically, if Youtube doesn’t want their data throttled, but the customer does, the customer should opt IN to throttling it.
I’m generally sympathetic to the argument that T-Mobile should make the whole thing opt-in rather than opt-out, but I am pretty much okay as long as the “opt” is in there somewhere. What I disagree with is the idea that YouTube should have a say in it once the choice is made.
Did BingeOn get turned on for people without them being told about it in advance? I am not on T-Mo, so I honestly have no idea what the customer communication really was, but I would expect that there was notice to customers. “Oh, I never read those emails” isn’t much of an excuse, even if it turns out to be depressingly common.
But the customer is NOT choosing for any of their service to be downgraded. T-Mobile is taking advantage of most customers’ ignorance and is making the choice for them, and then forcing them to opt out if they find out about it and don’t want it.
That’s unfair not only to the customers but also to the services.
Well, if T-Mo did this in the dead of night with no prior communication to the customer, then it’s supremely crappy. But if they told their customers about it in advance and were ignored, I find zero fault. Honestly I think this is meant to be win-win for T-Mo and its customers, and the vast majority of them will be happy to make use of it.
Yeah. Win for T-Mobile. Lose for some services, like YouTube.
What happens when a customer who is unaware that they have been involuntarily set up for BingeOn and then thinks they’re having problems watching videos on YouTube? Since a service like Netflix works just fine, they blame YouTube. How is that fair to YouTube?
And really, why should T-Mobile be the one to determine whether or not a customer is automatically opted into the program? Why don’t they just advertise it and allow customers to opt in? That way, customers would be at fault for blowing through their data plans. Ah! That wouldn’t work for T-Mobile because they offer unlimited data plans, and if those customers aren’t throttled, the network will suffer and slow down as a result. This is a way for T-Mobile to paint other services as “the bad guy” because their network sucks.
What’s bullsh*t is the crappy camera edits to zoom in on his carefully crafted words.
I left Verizon for T-Mobile because I felt the latter was less anti-consumer (and also because I wanted a Nexus 5 back then). I’ll have no qualms about leaving them for Project Fi if they keep on this trajectory.
John Legere reminds me of Donald Trump. Loud, brash and can attack if disagreed with. The plain fact is that TMobile is throttling the service. While it sounds great of paper and even better to consumers because it ‘free’ the reason really is probably to protect TMobile’s bandwith. Since people do like watching on their phones it can slow the whole service so this is a ‘win-win’ as made out by Legere.
I’ve been with TMobile forever and many of the other stuff I liked like free data/roaming in 120 countries but this is the first I’m not a fan of. It straddles a fine line with Net Neutrality and it should have been an Opt-in on Opt-out service. I went right to my settings to turn in off.
Hah if you guys think that them throttling Youtube is bad, see what happens to the users on T-Mobile who are consuming more than 22GB/s a month and are on a “congested tower”. Their connection is throttled to the point where you can’t sync Gmail.
Yes and this is the only reason I leave binge on. I work at a major airport and when you hit that 23rd gig it’s game over nothing works. People forget that they said you get around 3x more data for video. With binge for Netflix and data for video worked out the way they do. I don’t hit that 23 gig soft cap and the good thing is it’s all optinal. When I crossed over the magical 23 while on a congested tower it was game over for even web pages.
I can’t believe the media takes this ghetto company seriously. Do we even need tmobile posts on here? Nobody uses them.
I use t-mobile, and so do half the people i know.
I know ZERO tmobile users. The people i know actually do work on their phones and need them to work.
I had Verizon for 5 years and tmo for the past 2. Verizon data had more problems with data going out for a day here or there. Customer service always said they were having issues in my area. No issues from Tmo ever in any area. I travel the country for work, and my co worker has Verizon and tmo for me. I always have better speeds and signal the same as him. So not sure what you are talking about. Ignorance I guess
you must be in an area with bad t-mobile LTE coverage. I am in the opposite. I actually do work on my phone when needed and it works great, even getting faster LTE speeds than AT&T or Verizon in my area.
LOL. T-Mobile is the cheapest way to get mobile service in the US (on their family plans). I’ve done the research. They’re absolutely worth reporting on. Especially when they’ve pulled some dick move without even telling consumers
and mcdonald’s dollar menu is the cheapest way to feed a family but i don’t think a food blog should report on them.
I haven’t seen a dollar menu at McDonalds in a while. Where do you live?
I love this guy… I’m not a customer but I absolutely love the marketing and passion.
no wonder a moron likes another moron
Wow… That seems harsh.
I’m not sure how you can love the BingeOn marketing, especially since if I am paying for 2GB of 1080p crystal clear crisp video, then I want to receive 2GB worth of video streaming in 1080p with crystal clear video…. BingeOn forced you to be at a lesser video quality, even before you hit your 2GB limit…. that’s the problem……. Problem #2 is that Binge-On got turned on for everybody, even people with unlimited data plans who don’t have data limits, people who don’t even need BingeOn got it turned on in their accounts!
I love the “actor” John Legere not the campaign.
its good that you clarified that otherwise plenty of people would have thought you loved this deceptive marketing campaign of Binge-On
T-Mobile is just as scummy as Verizon.
I wouldn’t go that far
they are more so. this jack ass lies straight to your face and thinks he he curses and calls others bad names youll believe him. the whole binge on news event was 1 lie after another not even counting this throttling crap.
verizon out right says blank you if you dont like it. at least they are honest.
Legere is so full of crap it’s not even funny. Someone should tell this d-bag to be honest about it. How can people trust a company when the CEO is lying to your face about throttling. Instead of trying to deflect all criticism, he’s just brings more onto himself. I love seeing this all blowup in his face. He’s talked a big game for awhile now and frankly is doing nothing to back it up. His network still sucks. Stop being a d-bag, John
Like most companies, tout the ‘advantage’ while withholding the truth. Put ‘new and improved’ on the package while making it from cheaper stuff. Say ‘tastes even better!’ while giving you ten percent less and not mentioning it. Try our ‘unlimited’ plan, the one that has a 2gb limit and then we’ll throttle it down so far it’ll be unuseable, but it’s “unlimited”!
Considering that you can turn it off and that it is a transparent option, I don’t see anything wrong with it. I am not a T Mobile customer, but this seems better than the shady throttling of AT&T. If anything this may give customers a sense that they need less data and reduce their data package to T Mobile. This is a win for the uninformed consumer.
I am a T Mobile customer and would have preferred not to have to go turn it off. I think the main problem I see with it is, if they are throttling everything with it on, what’s the point of having the business partners? And if they are throttling everything, they shouldn’t be counting that against your data. Overall, not a bad concept, I just think they aren’t being clear about what it does.
They are very clear about what it does. It’s just that you and lots of other people don’t want to go read the specifics. You got free data from BingeOn partners and longer lasting data from non-partners. When the non-partners meet the technical requirements to become partners, their videos wouldn’t count against your data. And geez… Those five seconds it takes to turn it off… What a drag? Let’s go take 10 minutes to complain about it online instead.
That’s not true.
if i’m paying for 2Gigabytes of high-speed 1080p video……. then, I want…. 2GB of high-speed 1080p video……. not 2GB of slow-speed, 480p less-clear, less-crisp video…..
2GB of 1080 p steaming will be consumed in a couple of hours. By all means, turn it off and used up all your data. Then go buy additional high speed data. You think T-Mobile would be sad if you did that?
I’m on an unlimited data plan with T-Mobile, but i was stating a hypothetical scenario in my prior comment. the bad thing about Binge-On is that even for unlimited data customers, our video quality is degraded/throttled/ when we are paying for higher quality, Binge-On gives us lower quality. those who follow the blogs like myself, go and turn it off. and those who don’t they just suffer through it because they are tech-illiterates, or they have no idea why their video is lesser quality or have no idea why the internet on their phone is slower, they might just blame it on poor cellphone reception, when the truth is that tmobile is deliberately sabotaging their internet speeds.
Cool, it’s very simple to disable and then you can gobble up that 2GB of data. You’ve spent more time here complaining than it would have taken to disable it.
binge on is not available if your date is only 2GB. Has to be 6GB or higher just to get that feature.
Just to clarify: you’re paying for 2GB of data, not 1080p video. If you want to stream 1080p video with that data, by all means. It shouldn’t matter WHAT you’re doing with the data, because, to quote George Costanza: “It’s all pipes! What’s the difference?!”
This is the core argument behind net neutrality, and why the EFF is up in arms.
As many other commenters have already said, had this been Opt In as opposed to Opt Out, it would be a non-factor.
semantics……….. i could have easily said, if the network supports it (which it does in my area) , capable, non-congested, (which it is in my area), and my LTE speeds on my phone allow streaming 1080p (which it does in my area), THEN… my speeds should not be sabotaged by t-mobile…… there… now it’s clear enough. I agree making it opt-in would make everything a non-factor.
Actually, I think this violates net neutrality either way. Just because the customer gets something free doesn’t make it OK. Bottom line is that they are deciding which traffic to charge you for, instead of treating all data the same. Guessing all of y’all OK with this were also OK with paying for tethering on capped plans as well. Same concept that has already been ruled illegal.
What T-Mobile is doing here is throttling people’s 4G data that they paid for and T-Mo is earning money off it because its network is less congested.
It’s a simple scam from T-Mobile in order to make more money.
How would they earn money because the network is less congested? You think that T-Mobile gets reimbursed for unused bandwidth? This comment is absolutely ridiculous.
Uh, people using data cell service at full capacity can cause congestion on the data network which can cost the ISP money.
It’s simple, really. But continue acting stupid about it.
Again, free to turn it off and for several services which are now partnered it is ‘free’ data. The customer is able to consume more now while leaving their high speed 4G data untouched and usable for another service, which will cause just as much congestion.
I sure feel T-Mobile scamming me though, you know the lower payment, more data and music streaming which doesn’t touch the high speed data bucket I have .. yeah they’re putting the screws to me. I guess I should go back to Verizon or AT&T.
Your responses are well worded and spot on! I couldn’t have said it any better myself.
I’m not a T-Mobile customer. I enjoy having 4G LTE signal in less populated areas.
My point went over your head. The point is, T-Mobile is throttling traffic that is NOT a part of BingeOn. You, as a T-Mobile customer, should be pissed off about this. But yet you sit here defending that scumbag Legre.
You’re just borrowing language from an article. You even had to reference the article because you don’t really know anything about cellphones and cell towers. You’re the one who’s looking stupid. You’re the bandwagoner jumping on this whole “Net-Neutrality” campaign started by Google.
When a network is congested, everyone’s speeds go down and users experience longer ping times and may drop calls here and there. No “money” gets spent at that time. The only potential money saving is from the ability to add customers without investing into more spectrum. But this is a moot point because T-Mobile has heavily committed to investing in carrier aggregation and the 600 MHz auction. Also, whatever bandwidth gets freed up by BingeOn, it’s offset by the number of customers who sign up to T-Mobile because BingeOn is offered, essentially eliminating that benefit.
Lol, what? With less congestion, they can take on more customers before having to invest into improving their network.
Probably earning money by charging all the content providers access to their network
There is a cost associated with pushing data over the network. It’s a measurement network teams from all carriers use.
They buy it from AT&T.
What “The Doctor” has done here is assume he understands anything about the technology so that he can make sweeping, but ignorant, accusations.
It’s a simple scam to make people dumber.
Uh. No. Read this: http://www.androidcentral.com/bingeon-terrible-purpose-and-john-legere-needs-stop
Congrats they rehashed the article posted by the EFF which I have already read.
T-Mobile has alerted their customers to the feature, explained there is a disable button, but oh lets argue (as the Android Central article does) that it’s “hard to turn off because it’s buried (it isn’t, I found it without even purposefully looking) and people are too stupid/lazy to spend a couple minutes doing it”.
Again as I stated above, I guess I should be unhappy with all the good things I have that I did not have on Verizon and AT&T.
My point went way over your head.
T-Mobile is throttling traffic that is NOT part of the BingeOn program. Any person with a hint of intelligence would know that this breaks Net Neutrality laws with the service provider favoring some streams over others.
How do you, and so many others here, not get this?
I’m done discussing with you. You simply assume your translation of net neutrality rules and what T-Mobile is doing violates those rules, which quite obviously have not been ruled on yet. You are taking an assumption and trying to flip it to fact without possibly knowing each piece in the game.
Whatever bro, keep assuming and I’ll keep enjoying my additional data.
Keep defending scumbags that don’t deserve to be defended.
Why anyone would make excuses for T-Mobile’s behavior is beyond my comprehension. Why are you so blindly loyal to them? Are they paying you? I bet they are.
Aw man you guessed it. Guess I’ll have to go hide now!
The Doctor is correct..
Lol wut?
I have high speed 4G unlimited data and use Google products all the time. I should not be throttled, but I am… If T-Mobile didn’t want to provide the service then they should not have sold the packages.
T Mobile might not be throttling binge on. But I know they are throttling the network in the hood at least in Chicago. Whenever I’m on the south side in the ghetto my speeds drop down to about 1.5 but let me go up north in the much better neighborhoods and my speed s jump up 49 mbps
Sure it’s not just congested?
I seriously doubt it as most of the residents in the surrounding area has the free Obama phones
do you know what network those phones run on? i’ve seen them giving them out by the train station i pass. i’ve been curious, but not curious enough to stop and ask, not that the people working would probably have an answer.
I’m not sure what network those Obama phones are on but they’re dumb phones so it’s not like you can do much with them
interesting, the ones they are giving away in sac seem to be android devices (crappy ones no doubt) but the pictures on the boxes def look like smartphones. but now that’s it’s been raining, the phone people have vanished so i can’t even investigate if i wanted to.
The SafeLink devices are running on an MVNO funded and supported by Verizon. In areas where Verizon has no coverage (shocking, I know), then the MVNO will usually be a Sprint subsidiary.
*sigh* Not to get into a political debate, but a fact check. They aren’t “Obama” phones. They are actually “Bush” phones, as it was George Bush who created the SafeLink program (which actually goes much further back than that):
“The president has no direct impact on the program, and one could hardly call these devices “Obama Phones,” as the e-mail author does. This specific program, SafeLink, started under President George Bush, with grants from an independent company created under President Bill Clinton, which was a legacy of an act passed under President Franklin Roosevelt, which was influenced by an agreement reached between telecommunications companies and the administration of President Woodrow Wilson.” — quoted from http://www.factcheck.org/2009/10/the-obama-phone/
Also, the program is not funded at all from the government or from taxpayers. The telecommunications companies fund the program 100%.
but that doesn’t sound as fun. something about “ObamaPhone” has a certain ring to it.
like, can i get on the Obama Life plan? obamacare, obamaphone, obamaetc
LOL, I know… But… facts… *shrug* Hell, I’d even be OK with calling them “Welfare” phones, as you have to be at or below the poverty line to get one in the first place.
you get your facts out of here. facts have no place in politics!
That wins 1,000,000 internets today sir.
Shhhh. The racists just want to bash Obama for whatever reason, regardless of facts.
And I’m no more than a couple hundred feet from t mobile tower
Another example of tmobile as liars. They just recently criticized Verizon as publicly stating that they will have 5g out by 2017. They said that that they will have 5g as well and Verizon doesn’t even know what 5g is. Verizon was the company that didn’t invest in wimax or hspa+ and call it 4g. Verizon had 4g LTE as their only attempt at 4g. Meanwhile Tmobile, att and sprint all called hspa, wimax 4g coverage. So who are you going to believe?
Hey Scott, care to link to those claims? HSPA+ provided enough of a benefit to be classified as 4G (since the ratifying body couldn’t agree what “4G” was, btw). Verizon’s pitiful CDMA “3G” was at most a 3Mbps service (with overhead), yet you better believe they classified it as 3G. T-Mobile didn’t invest in WiMax, that was Sprint. The reason Verizon went full LTE was because CDMA had no other upgrade path, what did you expect them to do? Start deploying UMTS HSPA+ and then deploy LTE? T-Mobile and AT&T already had GSM networks which were already blowing the Verizon “3G” out of the water. HSPA+ was classified as 4G connectivity due to the vast performance gap between it and HSPA.
You can still change the quality in the YouTube app so I really don’t see how this is a problem. In fact, for the last several years, if your connection isn’t perfect, YouTube will typically select a lower video quality by default. So you just hit the little gear icon and change it back to 1080p. I don’t see how this is a problem.
They’re slowing down your YouTube connection so that YouTube automatically downgrades the video quality. That’s throttling.
Actually, it is a problem. A couple weeks ago I was trying to stream 1080p YouTube with T-Mobile LTE, it didn’t stream and buffered molasses slow. Even 720p couldn’t stream, only 480p could. It was really frustrating! Then I read about this and can see they are clearly throttling.
Turned off BingeOn and 1080p YouTube works flawlessly. I agree with this article’s author, this type of optimization should be opt-in not opt-out. I’ve had T-Mobile for a few years and have had zero issues and great LTE speeds with them here in the Twin Cities. This was my first bad experience and had me seriously considering switching before turning BingeOn off.
They are limiting you to 1.5Mbps for video streaming. If you manually switch it to 1080p, you will get lots of buffering.
This topic will get serious when people start getting their porn throttled/downgraded in quality/buffered.
Who “optimizes” for the lowest common denominator and the most negative affect possible?
Next when companies lay-off people will we hear they were Optimizing their work force?
People are obviously bringing their collection from their home PC on the road with them – complaining about 16GB and 32GB devices being too small
He called Google a bunch of jerks and he doesn’t know why they’re saying that maybe they want to get in the news lol
That’s just not right!
Lifetime is meant to be enjoyed on your living room sofa with a box of Kleenex and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s… Not on a phone or tablet.
/s
That paints a hilarious picture.
All these gimmicks. Just give everyone unlimited LTE data for a good price if you want the market.
If you’re really the UNCARRIER, then do what everyone else is not doing. I would love to see Unlimited data make a full return like the old days. Just like my grandfathered, clinging on to, Unlimited data on Verizon.
They do offer true unlimited deals from time to time, or if not anymore, they have in the past. My wife and I are on a 2-line unlimited everything plan (includes unlimited LTE) for $100 a month. T-Mo offered that plan for a limited time about a year ago.
It needs to be the norm, and not a promotion or top tier plan.
its annoying that even the unlimited data customers on T-Mobile had Binge-On turned on their accounts by default. I had to login to my tmobile account, find the setting, and turn it off.
I to am a unlimited data customer. I was wondering how to opt out. Thanx for the heads up on were to go to change it.
login to account –> click profile –> click media settings –> turn off Binge-On
Thanx again bro you are the best.
Well once you “fix” the laws of physics and determine how you milk unlimited out of a finite resource let them know, pretty sure they would LOVE to have that.
Honestly T-Mobile could clear this up with on simple change, allow the consumer to choose on an app by app basis if we want binge on to “optimize” the traffic coming from that app. That would fix the entire issue, being that the reason they are able to have this feature in the first place is that they are sniffing packets that traverse their network to see where they are going and coming from, they can easily filter out those same packets to turn the feature off on an app by app basis. I think the reason Google and all the interest groups are upset is that its an all or nothing deal, either everything is “optimized” or everything isn’t. And for companies like Google that are not including Youtube into the binge on unlimited video service that T-Mobile is offering, all their traffic on T-Mobile subscribers devices is being optimized at a lower bit rate when they or the consumer may not want happening because the feature is turned on in the account settings. Pretty simple fix if you ask me and will make everybody happy in the process.
Absolutely.
Honestly, it is an even simpler fix. Make it opt in instead of opt out.
You are entirely wrong. As a developer and engineer I can tell you your simple fix is an OS level change that would have to be done by Google not T-Mobile. Additionally, they are not sniffing packets. They don’t have to since they are the ones feeding you data in the first place. What they are most likely doing is “optimizing” traffic from those services (downloading lower resolution) making it easier for them to upload to you since they are uploading smaller files. Since you are now streaming a smaller file you’d have less buffering. This is even easier if everyone is opted in. Customers who opt out would be put through a separate network outside of the “optimized” bandwidth network. This approach is much easier and efficient.
Tl;dr: Opt-out is easier and more effective than opt-in.
Except the way they’re forcing a lower quality is by applying a 1.5Mbps throttle. The ball is then in the streaming provider’s court, where partner services will serve up 480p content that gets exempted from data caps, and non-partner services will get choked into serving up 480p due to stuttering. And if the service doesn’t have an automatic quality selecting algorithm, it’s just going to get worse for the user. And this throttle still apparently applies even when you’re just downloading a video file.
The problem is that T-Mobile is trying to bill “throttling” as “optimizing” when they should really be requesting 480p content from their providers, just like serving a mobile website based on a user agent.
I don’t know about this. I’ve opted back in to test this out and I can say pretty positively this is wrong. For one, I’ve run countless speedtest and I’ve never been below 15mb so I’m not sure where that 1.5mb throttled speed is coming from. I’ve also seen HD video on Amazon (Man in the High Castle is awesome!) which I believe isn’t a partner yet and Youtube which both played at 1080p60 (on videos where available). I didn’t get throttled, speed was not affected. I did notice in Netflix the 480p video but it performed decently well. Didn’t look horrible either. Just noticeable fuzz inherit with the resolution. After 4 days I turned it opted back out because I’m unlimited, but I didn’t not see any of these drawbacks that people are seeing.
Using T-Mobile, unlimited everything $80 Simple Choice in NYC on an 128GB S6 Edge (QHD)
Of course. T-Mobile isn’t throttling. It’s the others–the BAD, EVIL ONES–who are playing the semantics game. John Legere and his company are the angels.
This guy is still a turd
Att got fined $100 million bc of throttling. Tmobile should be fined as well. They play the ‘we’re the small company and good guy’ that’s why the government should set more spectrum aside for them. Then they say they have the fastest and biggest late network. Sounds like someone is playing both sides to me.
Lte network* not late..lol
Sounds like feminism to me
Why shouldn’t they? The government (FCC) sure has set plenty of spectrum aside for the likes of Verizon and AT&T with zero benefit to the consumer. When the cards are stacked against you because of corruption what are you supposed to do?
I’ve never really trusted this guy’s devil-may-care attitude and rumblings like this (among others) are part of the reason why. He and his company are as shady as any of the other carriers but he tries painting this picture that they’re totally not, duping people into believing it.
I don’t see it like you do. I don’t say Verizon is shady and T-mobile isn’t. It’s not ‘Who is shady’ they’re all shady! Instead I choose to ask myself this question: Who is less shady?
I hear what you’re saying, but really, at the end of the day it’s neither of them when you think about it. After all, they’re both after the same goal, our money, except T-Mobile trolls the hell out of Verizon for being more expensive in order to cover up the simple fact that their network is not as good as Verizon’s. Like, I’d understand it if T-Mobile was cheap AND their network was the absolute best of the best, but that’s not the case. So what’s there to do in a situation like that? Make the most noise. Paint yourself as the “uncarrier,” you know, a carrier that’s not like all the other mom’s because they’re the COOL mom.
Still, I won’t lie in saying that it’s not a brilliant strategy, because their quarterly number totally proves that it is, but at the end of the day T-Mobile is a for-profit business. Their net goal is the same as Verizon or even AT&T’s, and their CEO wants just as much money as the CEO of Verizon. So, yes, it IS shady acting as if you aren’t doing something dubious, being called out for it, and then being like “Come on, guys, we’re STILL the good guys, accept it.”
Who is the Slimest Shady? Please Stand Up
I haven’t seen any throttling issues. Funny enough, I do get slow loading when on home WiFi with 120+ Mbps connection but when I’m on LTE it’s a breeze.
Play 1080p vieo with binge on,i bad to turn it off and all is OK.
Works perfectly.
with Binge On all 4 of my lines played unwatchable always buffering video that was higher than 480P until I turned it off. The same goes for a few friends that have truly unlimited plans on T-Mobile too.
It didn’t for me and many other people. Download would be capped at around 195 KB/s
Binge on is for “DVD Quality” video which is considered 480p. Anything higher is considered HD and not included in Binge on.
BingeOn throttles video streaming/download to 1.5Mbps.
Not for me.