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The T-Mobile deal seems great at first blush. You get more stuff for free - yay! But, what if you're a startup streaming music service, and T-Mobile does NOT

The T-Mobile deal seems great at first blush. You get more stuff for free - yay! But, what if you're a startup streaming music service, and T-Mobile does NOT include you in their list of cap-free streaming? Good luck competing with the other providers. Perhaps a solution would be to classify types of services, and then make ANY company in that service eligible for the cap-free streaming. So, if you're a startup in the music streaming space, you are automatically included along with all the others. Then the telcos could provide packages of free services without harming innovation and competition.

SomeCallMeTim 12y ago
I get that. But streaming for free over mobile is far from the only way to compete. T-Mobile is the third-largest carrier in the US. Probably a small minority of T-Mobile users even know about the free streaming feature. If your business plan requires that tiny market segment to bootstrap you, then you need a new business plan. I just don't see it as a big enough differentiator to kill a new service, even if other carriers started doing something similar to T-Mobile. A new streaming service doesn't need to rely on free mobile streaming at all to bootstrap; if its focus were mobile streaming, a better answer could be to pre-cache hours worth of streams when on wifi. I end up in dead areas frequently, and I end up in roaming areas where T-Mobile won't give me data at all. I'd love a service that would auto-cache exactly the music I like to listen to so I could play it when roaming. I've heard Spotify CAN cache, but it's too expensive for my tastes. Something like a cacheable Pandora would be nice. But my point is that while yes, it grants an edge to certain established businesses, it's not an insurmountable barrier. Not like Comcast throttling Netflix; if you can't use the service in its primary form, it's DOA. And T-Mobile seems to be adding new services pretty quickly: Even indie stations like Radio Paradise are on the list.

SomeCallMeTim 12y ago

I get that. But streaming for free over mobile is far from the only way to compete. T-Mobile is the third-largest carrier in the US. Probably a small minority of T-Mobile users even know about the free streaming feature. If your business plan requires that tiny market segment to bootstrap you, then you need a new business plan. I just don't see it as a big enough differentiator to kill a new service, even if other carriers started doing something similar to T-Mobile. A new streaming service doesn't need to rely on free mobile streaming at all to bootstrap; if its focus were mobile streaming, a better answer could be to pre-cache hours worth of streams when on wifi. I end up in dead areas frequently, and I end up in roaming areas where T-Mobile won't give me data at all. I'd love a service that would auto-cache exactly the music I like to listen to so I could play it when roaming. I've heard Spotify CAN cache, but it's too expensive for my tastes. Something like a cacheable Pandora would be nice. But my point is that while yes, it grants an edge to certain established businesses, it's not an insurmountable barrier. Not like Comcast throttling Netflix; if you can't use the service in its primary form, it's DOA. And T-Mobile seems to be adding new services pretty quickly: Even indie stations like Radio Paradise are on the list.