13 ms·

T-Mobile’s Binge On Optimization is Just Throttling, Applies Indiscriminately

261 points by mortenjorck 11y ago

tshtf 11y ago
Ideally Binge On would only apply to the supported video providers, rather than throttling all video. However, there are rather three imperfect approaches to the problem: 1) Hacker's approach: Route all mobile traffic through a VPS/VPN using an OpenVPN client, available on all relevant mobile platforms. This way your mobile provider only sees VPN traffic. This will also bypass HTTP header injection used by Verizon and AT&T for third-party tracking. You won't get the free bandwidth from Binge On, but at least your provider won't be watching your traffic. 2) Active customer approach: Turn off Binge on. The problem here is that the customer won't be able to take advantage of the free video streaming provided by Binge On. 3) Regulatory approach: Have the FCC enforce net neutrality.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  (1) and (2) seem equivalent from the perspective of bypassing "Binge On"; (1) has the general benefit of encrypting all traffic, but no special benefit with respect to this particular service. Also: (4) Switch cell carriers. Unlike localities that lack multiple local ISPs, cell carriers have extensive competition available to choose from.
  - ars 11y ago
    > (4) Switch cell carriers Do that, and end up with metered bandwidth for more money. T-Mobile gets a pass from me because they have unlimited bandwidth and better prices. If that's what they need to do to make it happen, I'm all for it.
    - elif 11y ago
      Maybe you are unaware or treated better than I was. I left T-Mobile when I discovered their definition of 'unlimited' meant that after using 10GB, your connection becomes throttled to around 250kbps for the rest of the month.
      - JoshTriplett 11y ago
        News to me; their "unlimited 4G" plan is supposed to provide unlimited 4G, not limited 4G and unlimited low-speed data.
      - MrRadar 11y ago
        No, they have a genuine unlimited plan (for on-device data) these days. The only exception is if you are connected to a congested tower and have used more than 21 GBs your traffic will be de-prioritized (which in practice means under 100 kbps throughput).
- tertius 11y ago
  Does making it optional remove #3?
  - whistlecrackers 11y ago
    I hope so. T-Mobile is trying to provide their customers value that other carriers don't provide.
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      I very much doubt this is about 'providing value'. This gives them the general benefits of throttling users on the heaviest form of data use, with PR spun around to sound like a feature.
      - dangrossman 11y ago
        Binge On takes $45/month worth of data usage and gives it to me for $0 if I'm OK with throttling video to 1.5mbps. That's money in my pocket, and makes my phone more enjoyable to use. That's a feature providing huge value, not PR spin.
  - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
    It is optional. It's just opt-out instead of opt-in.
    - tertius 11y ago
      I opted out as soon as I could. I'm on unlimited so it doesn't make sense for me.
      - eli 11y ago
        Never attribute to malice and all that... but it's rather unfortunate that they silently opted-in customers with unlimited plans who don't really get and benefits
impostervt 11y ago
I look forward to the day when Mobile & Cable companies are just dumb pipes of data.
- ars 11y ago
  And then you pay per byte? It used to be that way, people hated it.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    Among techies, the most popular model seems to be the "fixed pipe" model. A set max data rate, unlimited bytes. Conveniently for them, the model essentially results in non-techies subsidizing their consumption. That wouldn't be the case if it wasn't for fractional allocation, but nobody wants to pay for true fixed allocation.
    - Aleman360 11y ago
      The problem is that a max data rate usually doesn't some with an SLA. ISP's obviously don't have enough bandwidth for all customers to fully utilize 10 gbps 24/7, for example. Paying based on usage solves that tragedy of the commons problem and works for utilities.
  - choward 11y ago
    What does this have to do with paying per byte? The problem is that the pricing is based off of data speeds, but you don't even get to use them the entire month. You hit a 300GB data cap with 75Mbps connection in less than 9 hours. If you want to be able to use your connection for the entire month you would get just under 1Mbps. They should charge for the total data or the rate, but using both is ridiculous. Infinite Internet speed with a data cap is worthless to me.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  "But value-added!" (an universal term meaning something that has absolutely no value whatsoever, but is the newest invention designed to rip customers off)
Klathmon 11y ago
I have so many problems with T-Mobile's Binge On and this is only making it so much worse. So now it's: * only providers they deem important enough to give the service to can use it (everyone else just gets their requests ignored) * it MUST be unencrypted to get the no-data-usage benefits (I might be wrong on this one, i can't find where i read this) * it needs to be done through a "blessed" app or it's not covered (For example, soundcloud is covered, but soundcloud through a browser is not...) * video in the service needs to be heavily compressed (with no way of showing the user that this is happening or who is doing it or why it's happening) * Now it comes out that video not even covered by the service must be heavily compressed... Again with no notification to the end users that this is happening, leaving them to point the blame at the site itself (netflix, youtube, etc...) since all other sites work fine.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  > * it MUST be unencrypted to get the no-data-usage benefits I haven't seen that one mentioned anywhere. Clearly they only recognize and throttle video from other servers when unencrypted (since they don't throttle other downloads from the same servers), but for services signed up with T-Mobile's "Binge On", it seems easy enough to ignore the bandwidth usage based on server IP, rather than sniffing file types. Do they really recognize the servers they partner with based on traffic sniffing rather than IP?
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    I thought all of the music apps that joined their program earlier had that imposed on them, however I can't seem to find where i read that so i might be wrong there.
    - ianlevesque 11y ago
      It's IP range or http URL pattern matching, we had to provide this information when we joined the music program. Interestingly they also try to exclude the related ad traffic, if any, but that's challenging due to how undocumented and varied ad networks are.
plexicle 11y ago
I've actually just left T-Mobile BECAUSE of the shady stuff they are doing with Binge-On. The "all of our customers LOVE Binge-On!" is absolutely not true. Looking at you John.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  You left T-Mobile instead of just turning it off?
  - plexicle 11y ago
    Absolutely. In the process of doing so. It's more about the fact that they WOULD do it, not so much that I can "opt-out". It's bad enough that it's even happening-- it's 10x worse to me that it's "opt-out" and that they are flat out lying about it to people.
    - revelation 11y ago
      The only problem is you'll be switching to someone like AT&T, who happily MitM your connections to insert extra ad-tracking cookies and the like.
      - plexicle 11y ago
        Sadly, you're not wrong. So I'm stuck trying to find the evils that I'm most content with being forced to put up with.
  - talmand 11y ago
    Well, it'll likely only be a matter of time before you can't turn it off.
  - progressive_dad 11y ago
    T-Mobile has had a reputation as a reliable "outsider" with less coverage, but better business practices than its competitors as well as better rates. If T-Mobile is going to throw that reputation down the toilet then there is no reason for me to have 2 bars in my house in downtown Chicago.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Someone1234 11y ago
It is legitimately worrying that they throttle non-streaming video downloads and streaming of services which aren't part of BingeOn. There are several cloud storage solutions which stream the video as it was uploaded (i.e. if it was 1080p when uploaded, they only stream is back at 1080p), so this scenario will be absolutely destroyed by BingeOn, making the video unwatchable, plus any kind of download for offline viewing. I'm tempted to disable BingeOn after this. I mostly watch YouTube anyway which isn't even included, but will be limited by this "feature."
doctorshady 11y ago
As much as I want to believe they do, I don't think most people care. Most Reddit threads on this are 75% "No, no! It's different because T-Mobile!" .
fcremo 11y ago
I have a neat idea: someone should implement a VPN-over-"video", so that all traffic (or at least server to phone) is not counted against data caps.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  Doesn't sound too difficult, if you don't mind several second ping times.
mikeash 11y ago
This is a good example of why providing some traffic for free (as T-Mobile previously did with some music services, for example) should still be considered a net neutrality problem, and be opposed. ISPs should just be dumb pipes. Route my packets to and from the internet. Charge me for traffic and be done. Anything beyond that and you get into perverse incentives where their desires may not line up with those of their customers. This sort of video optimization sounds like it could be a valuable service, but if so then it should be done beyond the ISP level. Set it up as a separate service, proxy traffic through it, and do it that way.
- ars 11y ago
  > ISPs should just be dumb pipes. Route my packets to and from the internet. Charge me for traffic and be done. You can do that if you want. There are tons of services that charge you per byte. They cost more, and people hate them. But if that's important to you, go for it.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I thought most ISPs were just dumb pipes, and the move away from that is still pretty limited and proceeding fitfully. As far as I can tell, both my wired (Verizon) and wireless (AT&T) ISPs work that way right now, for example.
  - feld 11y ago
    Nobody is moving to per-byte or per-gig billing. Everyone is moving away from it. It was a nightmare when I worked at an ISP that had clients still being billed per gig from early 00's.
jwr 11y ago
I think it is time to regulate the Internet. And before you all go ballistic on me, I mean the term "Internet". There should be a certain basic definition of the term, regulated by law. And just like you can't just put a sign up on your door and start calling your company a "Bank", you should not be able to advertise that you are providing the "Internet" without meeting certain regulations. These regulations should be fairly basic: pass all IPv6 traffic unmodified, pass all IPv4 traffic unmodified except for NAT. Then I would have a choice whether I want to pay for "Internet access", or "T-Mobile special limited edition we-will-modify-your-packets-as-we-see-fit networking package". Depending on pricing, the special limited edition networking package might actually work for me, but it should be clear that this is not the Internet. On a related note, there is a similar problem in Poland: the state licensed new spectrum under the condition that the new operator would have to provide free internet to anyone who registers, for several years. Fast forward two years, and "free internet" means being disconnected every hour and having to solve a horrific CAPTCHA and go through several redirects to get any access, which of course pretty much excludes your MiFi or other router-like devices, and turns your online experience into walking a minefield (will I manage to place this order before my access blows up and I'll have to reconnect, losing the data I entered?). This problem would not exist if it wasn't for a vague definition of the term "Internet".
- toth 11y ago
  Well, in this case T-Mobile is not modifying your packets, they are just slowing them down, so maybe they would still qualify?
  - jwr 11y ago
    Ok, add "no selective throttling based on packet content" to the definition then. I'm sure it needs to be worked out, but my point still stands.
    - ars 11y ago
      Why? It's not like there is unlimited bandwidth available. There isn't. If people followed your plan no one would have any bandwidth for anything. At least this way it's just video which can handle it. Your cure makes things worse, not better.
SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
I guess I'm going to be different and actually suggest that I think Binge On is fine. Almost all video streaming services will downgrade the stream quality if they get a 1.5Mbps pipe, and any that don't are at a competitive disadvantage to anyone who is streaming from a phone and who actually only has a 1.5Mbps pipe. It's built into most of the streaming protocols to downgrade on a slower connection. Source: I worked with video streaming on the client side when I was at Amazon, and additionally researched other options to the one we settled on. So T-Mobile is asking users to choose between a (potentially) lower quality video stream in exchange for getting tons of video streaming options for free. This reduces load on their network, because people were obviously streaming anyway, and has convinced the biggest providers like Netflix to voluntarily reduce their bandwidth consumption to 480p in order to get free streaming to T-Mobile customers. At best I would say that better user education could be called for, or potentially forcing the users to make an opt-in/out decision, but honestly I think the users would hate the interruption. This is clearly a situation like the European cookie permission law: If you force them to ask the users whether it's OK, sure they will ask, and that will interfere with the UX and piss off users. I'm fine with it being opt-out; let T-Mobile email or send a notification to everyone about how to opt out if they want, along with an explanation of the consequences, and let them decide whether to click the "opt out" button. Not "because T-Mobile," like another comment implied, but because it's a fine trade-off, and anyone who cares can just disable it. More than 480p on a tiny screen is nice sometimes, but I'll take free 480p over the cell network and watch my 1080p video when I'm at home on wifi. I also love to be able to stream music for free on T-Mobile. That's a feature I use all the time. Even my more "fringe" music streaming services are supported. This doesn't seem to me to be anti-competitive, and T-Mobile isn't charging anything to stream the music, so I think it's pure awesome.
- bradleyankrom 11y ago
  Maybe I'm in the minority, but I would like to be asked when changes like this occur. I don't consider it an inconvenience, but then again I care about things like net neutrality and my privacy.
  - arjie 11y ago
bradleyankrom 11y ago
It took me a while to find the page to opt out of Binge On, so here's the link for any other TMO customers who want to turn it off: https://my.t-mobile.com/profile.html https://my.t-mobile.com/profile.html (under the Media Settings tab).
me_again 11y ago
I was a bit surprised by this statement: "it’s pretty obvious that throttling all traffic based on application type definitely violates the principles of net neutrality". Setting aside the specifics of what T-Mobile is doing in thsi case, I thought the 'neutrality' in net neutrality was about neutrality of content provider, not content type. If I throttle all bittorrent or video traffic equally, it might be annoying to my users but I don't see why it is not neutral.
- wnevets 11y ago
  It is if your definition of neutrality is all packets should be treated equally regardless of source or contents.
frankosaurus 11y ago
Does Binge On subsume Music Freedom? The latter let me stream Spotify and Google Play Music without counting against my data cap. However, something changed around November 2015 whereby Spotify, Pandora, Google Play Music, et al cease to function over T-Mobile data on all my devices. Even spotify.com is inaccessible.
grandalf 11y ago
This is all an artifact of non-dedicated circuits. With a dedicated T1, for example, you know what you are getting and the circuit is idle when you are not using it. With a shared circuit, advertised "peak" and "average" bandwidth is all virtual and is managed via QoS, and is based on expected usage patterns and leveraging the anticipated lulls and peaks. It's very similar to financial arbitrage. So it may be the case that reducing the risk of sudden, simultaneous peak events allows the overall network to be much lower cost and more performant for other uses. T-Mobile is trying to squeeze out the most value for its users at the lowest cost. If a user wants a dedicated circuit, those are available from other vendors. Perhaps in the future carriers will offer circuits with QoS specifically tailored to different categories of users. It seems like custom QoS could be offered to individual users and priced accordingly. I'd happily tolerate lower max video download bandwidth in exchange for a lower price b/c I rarely watch video on my phone.
sliverstorm 11y ago
Reading the bit, it seems like the worst you can say about T-Mobile here is that the implementation is a little clumsy. I don't get the indignant uproar. Since when have new ideas been perfect at rollout?
tn13 11y ago
I am happy with T-Mobile's Binge On. Irrespective of what T-Mobile is doing I would like to keep that service.
derekp7 11y ago
I actually like this better than the thought of them altering the video stream themselves -- the video provider would normally have the responsibility of sending an appropriate bitrate for the current connection speed, and they would be in a better situation to give the best quality video for a given bandwidth.
crosre 11y ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10821781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10821781 for the typical vendor equipment feature set implementing this kind of feature. I find individual user profiling as shown in screen captures towards the end of the document more concerning...
unsignedint 11y ago
This whole issue could be avoided if T-mobile offered two check boxes instead of one. One to enable/disable Binge on, and other to apply same process to unsupported services. I believe they have been fairly clear to what it does to supported services, but it was certainly new to me they would do the same to unsupported services like Youtube.

261 points by mortenjorck 11y ago

tshtf 11y ago

Ideally Binge On would only apply to the supported video providers, rather than throttling all video. However, there are rather three imperfect approaches to the problem: 1) Hacker's approach: Route all mobile traffic through a VPS/VPN using an OpenVPN client, available on all relevant mobile platforms. This way your mobile provider only sees VPN traffic. This will also bypass HTTP header injection used by Verizon and AT&T for third-party tracking. You won't get the free bandwidth from Binge On, but at least your provider won't be watching your traffic. 2) Active customer approach: Turn off Binge on. The problem here is that the customer won't be able to take advantage of the free video streaming provided by Binge On. 3) Regulatory approach: Have the FCC enforce net neutrality.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
(1) and (2) seem equivalent from the perspective of bypassing "Binge On"; (1) has the general benefit of encrypting all traffic, but no special benefit with respect to this particular service. Also: (4) Switch cell carriers. Unlike localities that lack multiple local ISPs, cell carriers have extensive competition available to choose from.
- ars 11y ago
  > (4) Switch cell carriers Do that, and end up with metered bandwidth for more money. T-Mobile gets a pass from me because they have unlimited bandwidth and better prices. If that's what they need to do to make it happen, I'm all for it.
  - elif 11y ago
    Maybe you are unaware or treated better than I was. I left T-Mobile when I discovered their definition of 'unlimited' meant that after using 10GB, your connection becomes throttled to around 250kbps for the rest of the month.
    - JoshTriplett 11y ago
      News to me; their "unlimited 4G" plan is supposed to provide unlimited 4G, not limited 4G and unlimited low-speed data.
    - MrRadar 11y ago
      No, they have a genuine unlimited plan (for on-device data) these days. The only exception is if you are connected to a congested tower and have used more than 21 GBs your traffic will be de-prioritized (which in practice means under 100 kbps throughput).
tertius 11y ago
Does making it optional remove #3?
- whistlecrackers 11y ago
  I hope so. T-Mobile is trying to provide their customers value that other carriers don't provide.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    I very much doubt this is about 'providing value'. This gives them the general benefits of throttling users on the heaviest form of data use, with PR spun around to sound like a feature.
    - dangrossman 11y ago
      Binge On takes $45/month worth of data usage and gives it to me for $0 if I'm OK with throttling video to 1.5mbps. That's money in my pocket, and makes my phone more enjoyable to use. That's a feature providing huge value, not PR spin.
- SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
  It is optional. It's just opt-out instead of opt-in.
  - tertius 11y ago
    I opted out as soon as I could. I'm on unlimited so it doesn't make sense for me.
    - eli 11y ago
      Never attribute to malice and all that... but it's rather unfortunate that they silently opted-in customers with unlimited plans who don't really get and benefits

impostervt 11y ago

I look forward to the day when Mobile & Cable companies are just dumb pipes of data.

ars 11y ago
And then you pay per byte? It used to be that way, people hated it.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  Among techies, the most popular model seems to be the "fixed pipe" model. A set max data rate, unlimited bytes. Conveniently for them, the model essentially results in non-techies subsidizing their consumption. That wouldn't be the case if it wasn't for fractional allocation, but nobody wants to pay for true fixed allocation.
  - Aleman360 11y ago
    The problem is that a max data rate usually doesn't some with an SLA. ISP's obviously don't have enough bandwidth for all customers to fully utilize 10 gbps 24/7, for example. Paying based on usage solves that tragedy of the commons problem and works for utilities.
- choward 11y ago
  What does this have to do with paying per byte? The problem is that the pricing is based off of data speeds, but you don't even get to use them the entire month. You hit a 300GB data cap with 75Mbps connection in less than 9 hours. If you want to be able to use your connection for the entire month you would get just under 1Mbps. They should charge for the total data or the rate, but using both is ridiculous. Infinite Internet speed with a data cap is worthless to me.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
"But value-added!" (an universal term meaning something that has absolutely no value whatsoever, but is the newest invention designed to rip customers off)

Klathmon 11y ago

I have so many problems with T-Mobile's Binge On and this is only making it so much worse. So now it's: * only providers they deem important enough to give the service to can use it (everyone else just gets their requests ignored) * it MUST be unencrypted to get the no-data-usage benefits (I might be wrong on this one, i can't find where i read this) * it needs to be done through a "blessed" app or it's not covered (For example, soundcloud is covered, but soundcloud through a browser is not...) * video in the service needs to be heavily compressed (with no way of showing the user that this is happening or who is doing it or why it's happening) * Now it comes out that video not even covered by the service must be heavily compressed... Again with no notification to the end users that this is happening, leaving them to point the blame at the site itself (netflix, youtube, etc...) since all other sites work fine.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
> * it MUST be unencrypted to get the no-data-usage benefits I haven't seen that one mentioned anywhere. Clearly they only recognize and throttle video from other servers when unencrypted (since they don't throttle other downloads from the same servers), but for services signed up with T-Mobile's "Binge On", it seems easy enough to ignore the bandwidth usage based on server IP, rather than sniffing file types. Do they really recognize the servers they partner with based on traffic sniffing rather than IP?
- Klathmon 11y ago
  I thought all of the music apps that joined their program earlier had that imposed on them, however I can't seem to find where i read that so i might be wrong there.
  - ianlevesque 11y ago
    It's IP range or http URL pattern matching, we had to provide this information when we joined the music program. Interestingly they also try to exclude the related ad traffic, if any, but that's challenging due to how undocumented and varied ad networks are.

plexicle 11y ago

I've actually just left T-Mobile BECAUSE of the shady stuff they are doing with Binge-On. The "all of our customers LOVE Binge-On!" is absolutely not true. Looking at you John.

Someone1234 11y ago
You left T-Mobile instead of just turning it off?
- plexicle 11y ago
  Absolutely. In the process of doing so. It's more about the fact that they WOULD do it, not so much that I can "opt-out". It's bad enough that it's even happening-- it's 10x worse to me that it's "opt-out" and that they are flat out lying about it to people.
  - revelation 11y ago
    The only problem is you'll be switching to someone like AT&T, who happily MitM your connections to insert extra ad-tracking cookies and the like.
    - plexicle 11y ago
      Sadly, you're not wrong. So I'm stuck trying to find the evils that I'm most content with being forced to put up with.
- talmand 11y ago
  Well, it'll likely only be a matter of time before you can't turn it off.
- progressive_dad 11y ago
  T-Mobile has had a reputation as a reliable "outsider" with less coverage, but better business practices than its competitors as well as better rates. If T-Mobile is going to throw that reputation down the toilet then there is no reason for me to have 2 bars in my house in downtown Chicago.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Someone1234 11y ago

It is legitimately worrying that they throttle non-streaming video downloads and streaming of services which aren't part of BingeOn. There are several cloud storage solutions which stream the video as it was uploaded (i.e. if it was 1080p when uploaded, they only stream is back at 1080p), so this scenario will be absolutely destroyed by BingeOn, making the video unwatchable, plus any kind of download for offline viewing. I'm tempted to disable BingeOn after this. I mostly watch YouTube anyway which isn't even included, but will be limited by this "feature."

doctorshady 11y ago

As much as I want to believe they do, I don't think most people care. Most Reddit threads on this are 75% "No, no! It's different because T-Mobile!" .

fcremo 11y ago

I have a neat idea: someone should implement a VPN-over-"video", so that all traffic (or at least server to phone) is not counted against data caps.

nitrogen 11y ago
Doesn't sound too difficult, if you don't mind several second ping times.

mikeash 11y ago

This is a good example of why providing some traffic for free (as T-Mobile previously did with some music services, for example) should still be considered a net neutrality problem, and be opposed. ISPs should just be dumb pipes. Route my packets to and from the internet. Charge me for traffic and be done. Anything beyond that and you get into perverse incentives where their desires may not line up with those of their customers. This sort of video optimization sounds like it could be a valuable service, but if so then it should be done beyond the ISP level. Set it up as a separate service, proxy traffic through it, and do it that way.

ars 11y ago
> ISPs should just be dumb pipes. Route my packets to and from the internet. Charge me for traffic and be done. You can do that if you want. There are tons of services that charge you per byte. They cost more, and people hate them. But if that's important to you, go for it.
- mikeash 11y ago
  I thought most ISPs were just dumb pipes, and the move away from that is still pretty limited and proceeding fitfully. As far as I can tell, both my wired (Verizon) and wireless (AT&T) ISPs work that way right now, for example.
- feld 11y ago
  Nobody is moving to per-byte or per-gig billing. Everyone is moving away from it. It was a nightmare when I worked at an ISP that had clients still being billed per gig from early 00's.

jwr 11y ago

I think it is time to regulate the Internet. And before you all go ballistic on me, I mean the term "Internet". There should be a certain basic definition of the term, regulated by law. And just like you can't just put a sign up on your door and start calling your company a "Bank", you should not be able to advertise that you are providing the "Internet" without meeting certain regulations. These regulations should be fairly basic: pass all IPv6 traffic unmodified, pass all IPv4 traffic unmodified except for NAT. Then I would have a choice whether I want to pay for "Internet access", or "T-Mobile special limited edition we-will-modify-your-packets-as-we-see-fit networking package". Depending on pricing, the special limited edition networking package might actually work for me, but it should be clear that this is not the Internet. On a related note, there is a similar problem in Poland: the state licensed new spectrum under the condition that the new operator would have to provide free internet to anyone who registers, for several years. Fast forward two years, and "free internet" means being disconnected every hour and having to solve a horrific CAPTCHA and go through several redirects to get any access, which of course pretty much excludes your MiFi or other router-like devices, and turns your online experience into walking a minefield (will I manage to place this order before my access blows up and I'll have to reconnect, losing the data I entered?). This problem would not exist if it wasn't for a vague definition of the term "Internet".

toth 11y ago
Well, in this case T-Mobile is not modifying your packets, they are just slowing them down, so maybe they would still qualify?
- jwr 11y ago
  Ok, add "no selective throttling based on packet content" to the definition then. I'm sure it needs to be worked out, but my point still stands.
  - ars 11y ago
    Why? It's not like there is unlimited bandwidth available. There isn't. If people followed your plan no one would have any bandwidth for anything. At least this way it's just video which can handle it. Your cure makes things worse, not better.

SomeCallMeTim 11y ago

I guess I'm going to be different and actually suggest that I think Binge On is fine. Almost all video streaming services will downgrade the stream quality if they get a 1.5Mbps pipe, and any that don't are at a competitive disadvantage to anyone who is streaming from a phone and who actually only has a 1.5Mbps pipe. It's built into most of the streaming protocols to downgrade on a slower connection. Source: I worked with video streaming on the client side when I was at Amazon, and additionally researched other options to the one we settled on. So T-Mobile is asking users to choose between a (potentially) lower quality video stream in exchange for getting tons of video streaming options for free. This reduces load on their network, because people were obviously streaming anyway, and has convinced the biggest providers like Netflix to voluntarily reduce their bandwidth consumption to 480p in order to get free streaming to T-Mobile customers. At best I would say that better user education could be called for, or potentially forcing the users to make an opt-in/out decision, but honestly I think the users would hate the interruption. This is clearly a situation like the European cookie permission law: If you force them to ask the users whether it's OK, sure they will ask, and that will interfere with the UX and piss off users. I'm fine with it being opt-out; let T-Mobile email or send a notification to everyone about how to opt out if they want, along with an explanation of the consequences, and let them decide whether to click the "opt out" button. Not "because T-Mobile," like another comment implied, but because it's a fine trade-off, and anyone who cares can just disable it. More than 480p on a tiny screen is nice sometimes, but I'll take free 480p over the cell network and watch my 1080p video when I'm at home on wifi. I also love to be able to stream music for free on T-Mobile. That's a feature I use all the time. Even my more "fringe" music streaming services are supported. This doesn't seem to me to be anti-competitive, and T-Mobile isn't charging anything to stream the music, so I think it's pure awesome.

bradleyankrom 11y ago
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I would like to be asked when changes like this occur. I don't consider it an inconvenience, but then again I care about things like net neutrality and my privacy.
- arjie 11y ago

bradleyankrom 11y ago

It took me a while to find the page to opt out of Binge On, so here's the link for any other TMO customers who want to turn it off: https://my.t-mobile.com/profile.html https://my.t-mobile.com/profile.html (under the Media Settings tab).

me_again 11y ago

I was a bit surprised by this statement: "it’s pretty obvious that throttling all traffic based on application type definitely violates the principles of net neutrality". Setting aside the specifics of what T-Mobile is doing in thsi case, I thought the 'neutrality' in net neutrality was about neutrality of content provider, not content type. If I throttle all bittorrent or video traffic equally, it might be annoying to my users but I don't see why it is not neutral.

wnevets 11y ago
It is if your definition of neutrality is all packets should be treated equally regardless of source or contents.

frankosaurus 11y ago

Does Binge On subsume Music Freedom? The latter let me stream Spotify and Google Play Music without counting against my data cap. However, something changed around November 2015 whereby Spotify, Pandora, Google Play Music, et al cease to function over T-Mobile data on all my devices. Even spotify.com is inaccessible.

grandalf 11y ago

This is all an artifact of non-dedicated circuits. With a dedicated T1, for example, you know what you are getting and the circuit is idle when you are not using it. With a shared circuit, advertised "peak" and "average" bandwidth is all virtual and is managed via QoS, and is based on expected usage patterns and leveraging the anticipated lulls and peaks. It's very similar to financial arbitrage. So it may be the case that reducing the risk of sudden, simultaneous peak events allows the overall network to be much lower cost and more performant for other uses. T-Mobile is trying to squeeze out the most value for its users at the lowest cost. If a user wants a dedicated circuit, those are available from other vendors. Perhaps in the future carriers will offer circuits with QoS specifically tailored to different categories of users. It seems like custom QoS could be offered to individual users and priced accordingly. I'd happily tolerate lower max video download bandwidth in exchange for a lower price b/c I rarely watch video on my phone.

sliverstorm 11y ago

Reading the bit, it seems like the worst you can say about T-Mobile here is that the implementation is a little clumsy. I don't get the indignant uproar. Since when have new ideas been perfect at rollout?

tn13 11y ago

I am happy with T-Mobile's Binge On. Irrespective of what T-Mobile is doing I would like to keep that service.

derekp7 11y ago

I actually like this better than the thought of them altering the video stream themselves -- the video provider would normally have the responsibility of sending an appropriate bitrate for the current connection speed, and they would be in a better situation to give the best quality video for a given bandwidth.

crosre 11y ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10821781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10821781 for the typical vendor equipment feature set implementing this kind of feature. I find individual user profiling as shown in screen captures towards the end of the document more concerning...

unsignedint 11y ago

This whole issue could be avoided if T-mobile offered two check boxes instead of one. One to enable/disable Binge on, and other to apply same process to unsupported services. I believe they have been fairly clear to what it does to supported services, but it was certainly new to me they would do the same to unsupported services like Youtube.