6 ms·

T-Mobile offers one-week network test drive, free music streaming

34 points by arms77 12y ago

chimeracoder 12y ago
This is exactly what the end of net neutrality looks like. Certain "approved" services won't count towards your data plan, whereas all the others will be limited. As a result, it will be nearly impossible for startups to break into new markets, because they not only have to face the challenge of acquiring new users, but their services will be inherently inferior (from the user's perspective), as they will count towards their data caps. There will be less innovation, and more stagnation as incumbents face less and less competition: http://avc.com/2014/01/vc-pitches-in-a-year-or-two/ http://avc.com/2014/01/vc-pitches-in-a-year-or-two/ Notice how not all streaming services are covered - only the ones that T-Mobile has approved here.
- tzs 12y ago
  > Notice how not all music streaming services are covered - only the ones that T-Mobile has approved here They give instructions on their site for legal steaming music services to request to be added, and have said they want to cover them all.
  - judk 12y ago
    But it still is only for "music streaming", not for any other bits I might want to use on my mobile device (augmented reality, maps, video, games....)
    - mikestew 12y ago
      I don't understand your complaint. Is it that not everything you might possibly want to download or stream is covered? Are you looking at this not as an added bonus, but less than you expected when you initially signed up with T-Mobile? As I understand it, you can use whatever you want on your phone and that hasn't changed one lick since the announcement.
      - x0054 12y ago
        I was really split on the issue. On one side it's a good thing, and a really cool thing for the t-mobile customers. However, this is a bad thing for progress. Here is why: 1. Music is a pusher, it get's people to buy bigger data plans, it gets companies to provide bigger data plans. No that music is unlimited on T-Mobile, it's less likely that we are going to see cheeper data plans. Instead, it's just going to be unlimited music, and same old data plan for everything else. 2. Forget about discriminating one company over another. What about discriminating one type of content over another. What makes music better then spoken word podcasts, or online video, or netflix. You have to remember, nothing in this life is free. By promoting music content, t-mobile is necessarily demoting other types of content.
    - eli 12y ago
      Worse, only for approved music streaming. Let's say I'm a mobile-focused music streaming startup. How will I convince people to switch to me when Spotify lets them stream without it counting against their data cap but my service can't offer that. T-Mobile hasn't added support for Google Play or Xbox Music or last.fm or Rdio. I think it will be a very (very) long time before extend it to the scrappy startups. It's effectively a gift to incumbent streaming services and a barrier to entry for newcomers.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > This is exactly what the end of net neutrality looks like. What "end of net neutrality?" There was never a point in time where this would have been disallowed. As a T-Mobile customer, I think this is fantastic. There are a lot of potential advantages to vertical integration of the network and the content provider. Imagine caching Spotify data right at the cell site to minimize the impact on the backhaul, or offering reduced data charges for Netflix in situations where T-Mobile can take advantage of LTE MBSFN. Moreover, the usual justifications for regulation aren't applicable here. T-Mobile has three major competitors in every one of its markets, and more than that in some. They bought the spectrum with private capital, and built the network with private capital. They don't owe it to startups to make their VC pitches easier.
  - dethstar 12y ago
    I think you should keep in mind this site is visited largely by people starting their own business, most of the time, on the internet. So what does this mean to them then? That its fading, its going from being able to serve people all around the world and build and challenge the companies at the top with your new and revolutionary idea (and get very very rich) that would be ditched by the big companies corporate branch (do you imagine what cable companies would've said if someone from the inside tried to build a netflix at first?, or what was the reason that didn't happen before since they had rights to the content already?). And that that's it, there's a new better X service? oh but it isn't free on my carrier, I guess I'll stick with Y.
    - naturalethic 12y ago
      So who should control the Internet?
      - dethstar 12y ago
        im sorry, i dont think i have the answer to that? Depends who you ask. But the point of my reply was to try to show why the people here claiming it isnt fair is saying that. If you ask me i dont think anyone should have full control of the internet.
- sksk 12y ago
  >> Notice how not all music streaming services are covered - only the ones that T-Mobile has approved here. "During the announcement, T-Mobile’s John Legere assured the audience that their initial picks for streaming services wasn’t any sort of competitive/business move. Rather, it was a matter of technical implementation. They’ve got to manually configure the network to whitelist each service’s myriad data sources, so they picked just eight to start. The goal, Legere says, is to include “every music streaming service” in the program; moving forward, they’ll invite customers to vote on which services get added next." http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/t-mobile-stops-counting-data-used-with-spotify-pandora-itunes-radio-and-certain-other-music-services/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/t-mobile-stops-counting-dat...
  - eli 12y ago
    That's probably true and I have no reason to believe T-Mobile is acting in bad faith, but that's not good enough. This is a bad idea. Unless you can offer the same service to every streaming audio service (even little startups) then it ain't neutral. T-Mobile currently has a poll on their Facebook page for which streaming services to add next. How is a new startup supposed to get on that list when it's competing in a poll with Google, Microsoft, last.fm, etc. I would prefer that my ISP not give special treatment to packets from one company over another. Just deliver the bytes I paid for, thanks.
    - sliverstorm 12y ago
      It's never perfectly neutral & accessible to companies of any size. How is it fair when you have to pay money to develop apps for iOS? That's not equal-opportunity! Answer: you're right, it isn't.
      - eli 12y ago
        I think I phrased that poorly. I'm not asking that they make it perfect, I'm saying it's just a plain bad idea. It would be impractical to implement in a fair way. So it has the (likely unintended) effect of reducing competition. It's a bad idea. The world is not fair and this makes one tiny piece of it even less so.
- naturalethic 12y ago
  In commieland all data streams of any kind are inherently valuable to each and every man on earth regardless the point of origin or destination. In the real world certain data streams are of higher value to certain people based on their route and content.
- jsz0 12y ago
  > This is exactly what the end of net neutrality looks like Probably yeah. We can party thank the ignorant mob mentality of the Internet for it. Over the last year or so we've heard nothing but gloom and doom about how terrible the end of net neutrality would be but hey free unlimited streaming music? That sounds nice. Why didn't pro-regulation folks mention that part? It's almost like they were intentionally misleading people to further their best interests? Maybe exactly like those ISPs who realized it was in their best interest to break into a new market of companies with multi-million/billion dollar profits who are willing to pay-to-play? > nearly impossible for startups to break into new markets What's the point in pretending these startups don't have the exact same motivations as ISPs or even other services who opt to pay for the 'fast lane' to improve their service? Everyone is out to maximize their own profits and since the ole' economic ladder has a few broken rungs we know the average consumer isn't going to magically have more money to spend anytime soon. This has always simply been a debate over who gets to take the money. > only the ones that T-Mobile has approved here. If it's all doom and gloom then surely it will create a great opportunity for new players to jump into the ISP market and provide 100% cap free / 100% net neutral / 100% SLA 24x7 guaranteed speeds to consumers. If the issue is as one-sided as we have been led to believe then perhaps companies like FaceBook wouldn't be prioritizing their billions on WhatsApp or maybe Apple wouldn't be spending billions on Dr. Dre? Maybe instead they would be investing money into jumping into the ISP market? If the top 5 major tech companies in the US banded together and invested even 10% of their revenue in the ISP market this would be a non-issue. So why don't they? Turns out they can make more money buying Dr. Dre and their motivations are exactly the same. Money... Good.
judk 12y ago
Thank you for telling me the content of the spam email I received today.
Mandatum 12y ago
For those doting on net neutrality - this is purely the 'answer' from a Cable companies perspective. People don't need cable now. So what do you do? Buy an ISP, match up with existing partners to offer deals. It's already happened here in New Zealand. Telecom have partnered with Spotify, Vodafone has just bought a bunch of smaller ISP's. Sky, originally our version of "cable"/satellite has now bought out a lot of the bigger ISP's and is using it's network to push content via streaming services at a premium. The funny thing is, Telecom own pretty much all of our lines. (Govt sold them in the 80's.) The plot thickens..
- cbhl 12y ago
  I dunno. Preferential zero-rating of a specific service, whether it's Facebook or Spotify, is precisely the antithesis of net neutrality. When I think of net neutrality, I think about what happened to ISPs in Canada -- bandwidth caps (albeit large ones, after many years of squabbling) and per-GB overage fees. But, while I'd rather that the ISP charge me a reasonable tariff for additional data usage than throttle me during peak hours for a fixed price, I can see that not everyone would like it that way.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Picking winners and losers in the music streaming business: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140619/06354227623/when-your-internet-access-provider-gets-to-pick-winners-losers-theres-problem.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140619/06354227623/when-...
sliverstorm 12y ago
Where the heck is this list...
naturalethic 12y ago
This is a bit gimmicky. They should build market share through earned reputation.
chockablock 12y ago
Great marketing move. Consider how much more press/mileage T-Mo gets for this, versus raising data caps by an equivalent amount (E.g. back in March when they bumped caps up by 0.5GB/mo on most of their plans [1].) [1] http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=13758 http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=13758

34 points by arms77 12y ago

This is exactly what the end of net neutrality looks like. Certain "approved" services won't count towards your data plan, whereas all the others will be limited. As a result, it will be nearly impossible for startups to break into new markets, because they not only have to face the challenge of acquiring new users, but their services will be inherently inferior (from the user's perspective), as they will count towards their data caps. There will be less innovation, and more stagnation as incumbents face less and less competition: http://avc.com/2014/01/vc-pitches-in-a-year-or-two/ http://avc.com/2014/01/vc-pitches-in-a-year-or-two/ Notice how not all streaming services are covered - only the ones that T-Mobile has approved here.

tzs 12y ago
> Notice how not all music streaming services are covered - only the ones that T-Mobile has approved here They give instructions on their site for legal steaming music services to request to be added, and have said they want to cover them all.
- judk 12y ago
  But it still is only for "music streaming", not for any other bits I might want to use on my mobile device (augmented reality, maps, video, games....)
  - mikestew 12y ago
    I don't understand your complaint. Is it that not everything you might possibly want to download or stream is covered? Are you looking at this not as an added bonus, but less than you expected when you initially signed up with T-Mobile? As I understand it, you can use whatever you want on your phone and that hasn't changed one lick since the announcement.
    - x0054 12y ago
      I was really split on the issue. On one side it's a good thing, and a really cool thing for the t-mobile customers. However, this is a bad thing for progress. Here is why: 1. Music is a pusher, it get's people to buy bigger data plans, it gets companies to provide bigger data plans. No that music is unlimited on T-Mobile, it's less likely that we are going to see cheeper data plans. Instead, it's just going to be unlimited music, and same old data plan for everything else. 2. Forget about discriminating one company over another. What about discriminating one type of content over another. What makes music better then spoken word podcasts, or online video, or netflix. You have to remember, nothing in this life is free. By promoting music content, t-mobile is necessarily demoting other types of content.
  - eli 12y ago
    Worse, only for approved music streaming. Let's say I'm a mobile-focused music streaming startup. How will I convince people to switch to me when Spotify lets them stream without it counting against their data cap but my service can't offer that. T-Mobile hasn't added support for Google Play or Xbox Music or last.fm or Rdio. I think it will be a very (very) long time before extend it to the scrappy startups. It's effectively a gift to incumbent streaming services and a barrier to entry for newcomers.
rayiner 12y ago
> This is exactly what the end of net neutrality looks like. What "end of net neutrality?" There was never a point in time where this would have been disallowed. As a T-Mobile customer, I think this is fantastic. There are a lot of potential advantages to vertical integration of the network and the content provider. Imagine caching Spotify data right at the cell site to minimize the impact on the backhaul, or offering reduced data charges for Netflix in situations where T-Mobile can take advantage of LTE MBSFN. Moreover, the usual justifications for regulation aren't applicable here. T-Mobile has three major competitors in every one of its markets, and more than that in some. They bought the spectrum with private capital, and built the network with private capital. They don't owe it to startups to make their VC pitches easier.
- dethstar 12y ago
  I think you should keep in mind this site is visited largely by people starting their own business, most of the time, on the internet. So what does this mean to them then? That its fading, its going from being able to serve people all around the world and build and challenge the companies at the top with your new and revolutionary idea (and get very very rich) that would be ditched by the big companies corporate branch (do you imagine what cable companies would've said if someone from the inside tried to build a netflix at first?, or what was the reason that didn't happen before since they had rights to the content already?). And that that's it, there's a new better X service? oh but it isn't free on my carrier, I guess I'll stick with Y.
  - naturalethic 12y ago
    So who should control the Internet?
    - dethstar 12y ago
      im sorry, i dont think i have the answer to that? Depends who you ask. But the point of my reply was to try to show why the people here claiming it isnt fair is saying that. If you ask me i dont think anyone should have full control of the internet.
sksk 12y ago
>> Notice how not all music streaming services are covered - only the ones that T-Mobile has approved here. "During the announcement, T-Mobile’s John Legere assured the audience that their initial picks for streaming services wasn’t any sort of competitive/business move. Rather, it was a matter of technical implementation. They’ve got to manually configure the network to whitelist each service’s myriad data sources, so they picked just eight to start. The goal, Legere says, is to include “every music streaming service” in the program; moving forward, they’ll invite customers to vote on which services get added next." http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/t-mobile-stops-counting-data-used-with-spotify-pandora-itunes-radio-and-certain-other-music-services/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/t-mobile-stops-counting-dat...
- eli 12y ago
  That's probably true and I have no reason to believe T-Mobile is acting in bad faith, but that's not good enough. This is a bad idea. Unless you can offer the same service to every streaming audio service (even little startups) then it ain't neutral. T-Mobile currently has a poll on their Facebook page for which streaming services to add next. How is a new startup supposed to get on that list when it's competing in a poll with Google, Microsoft, last.fm, etc. I would prefer that my ISP not give special treatment to packets from one company over another. Just deliver the bytes I paid for, thanks.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    It's never perfectly neutral & accessible to companies of any size. How is it fair when you have to pay money to develop apps for iOS? That's not equal-opportunity! Answer: you're right, it isn't.
    - eli 12y ago
      I think I phrased that poorly. I'm not asking that they make it perfect, I'm saying it's just a plain bad idea. It would be impractical to implement in a fair way. So it has the (likely unintended) effect of reducing competition. It's a bad idea. The world is not fair and this makes one tiny piece of it even less so.
naturalethic 12y ago
In commieland all data streams of any kind are inherently valuable to each and every man on earth regardless the point of origin or destination. In the real world certain data streams are of higher value to certain people based on their route and content.
jsz0 12y ago
> This is exactly what the end of net neutrality looks like Probably yeah. We can party thank the ignorant mob mentality of the Internet for it. Over the last year or so we've heard nothing but gloom and doom about how terrible the end of net neutrality would be but hey free unlimited streaming music? That sounds nice. Why didn't pro-regulation folks mention that part? It's almost like they were intentionally misleading people to further their best interests? Maybe exactly like those ISPs who realized it was in their best interest to break into a new market of companies with multi-million/billion dollar profits who are willing to pay-to-play? > nearly impossible for startups to break into new markets What's the point in pretending these startups don't have the exact same motivations as ISPs or even other services who opt to pay for the 'fast lane' to improve their service? Everyone is out to maximize their own profits and since the ole' economic ladder has a few broken rungs we know the average consumer isn't going to magically have more money to spend anytime soon. This has always simply been a debate over who gets to take the money. > only the ones that T-Mobile has approved here. If it's all doom and gloom then surely it will create a great opportunity for new players to jump into the ISP market and provide 100% cap free / 100% net neutral / 100% SLA 24x7 guaranteed speeds to consumers. If the issue is as one-sided as we have been led to believe then perhaps companies like FaceBook wouldn't be prioritizing their billions on WhatsApp or maybe Apple wouldn't be spending billions on Dr. Dre? Maybe instead they would be investing money into jumping into the ISP market? If the top 5 major tech companies in the US banded together and invested even 10% of their revenue in the ISP market this would be a non-issue. So why don't they? Turns out they can make more money buying Dr. Dre and their motivations are exactly the same. Money... Good.

judk 12y ago

Thank you for telling me the content of the spam email I received today.

Mandatum 12y ago

For those doting on net neutrality - this is purely the 'answer' from a Cable companies perspective. People don't need cable now. So what do you do? Buy an ISP, match up with existing partners to offer deals. It's already happened here in New Zealand. Telecom have partnered with Spotify, Vodafone has just bought a bunch of smaller ISP's. Sky, originally our version of "cable"/satellite has now bought out a lot of the bigger ISP's and is using it's network to push content via streaming services at a premium. The funny thing is, Telecom own pretty much all of our lines. (Govt sold them in the 80's.) The plot thickens..

cbhl 12y ago
I dunno. Preferential zero-rating of a specific service, whether it's Facebook or Spotify, is precisely the antithesis of net neutrality. When I think of net neutrality, I think about what happened to ISPs in Canada -- bandwidth caps (albeit large ones, after many years of squabbling) and per-GB overage fees. But, while I'd rather that the ISP charge me a reasonable tariff for additional data usage than throttle me during peak hours for a fixed price, I can see that not everyone would like it that way.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Picking winners and losers in the music streaming business: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140619/06354227623/when-your-internet-access-provider-gets-to-pick-winners-losers-theres-problem.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140619/06354227623/when-...

sliverstorm 12y ago

Where the heck is this list...

naturalethic 12y ago

This is a bit gimmicky. They should build market share through earned reputation.

chockablock 12y ago

Great marketing move. Consider how much more press/mileage T-Mo gets for this, versus raising data caps by an equivalent amount (E.g. back in March when they bumped caps up by 0.5GB/mo on most of their plans [1].) [1] http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=13758 http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=13758