T-Mobile 'Binge On' Adds YouTube, Google Play Movies, and More

[iOSFangirl6001]

Well that was unexpected. Curious how YouTube/Google worked out their differences with T-Mobile


Anyway cue another thread to open up the carrier wars and TMO defenders

If this isn't a violation of net neutrality, I guess nothing is.

Yep... My thoughts exactly

 

[0007776]

Well that was unexpected. Curious how YouTube/Google worked out their differences with T-Mobile


Anyway cue another thread to open up the carrier wars and TMO defenders



Yep... My thoughts exactly

They just decided to go ahead and apply. This is borderline violating net neutrality, but I think since they allow any streaming site to join it is barely on the right side. That said regulators should watch them closely to ensure that they don't slip over to the other side.

 

[cmwade77]

If this isn't a violation of net neutrality, I guess nothing is.

Huh? How is this a violation of Net Neutrality?

Net Neutrality states that you cannot throttle certain websites or internet traffic in order to reduce the quality of the service. It also states that you cannot charge a particular type of traffic or site extra to use your network. So if T-Mobile went to YouTube and said pay us $10,000 a month and we won't count your traffic towards our users data caps, that would violate net neutrality. Instead they have gone to Youtube and said we would like to give our users a CHOICE of viewing your content at full quality and have it count against their data caps or watch at a reduced quality and have it not count against their data caps.

Binge On doesn't actually throttle anything, instead it offers consumers the choice: Do you want to reduce video quality and in exchange we will not count it towards your data cap? Or do you want to watch in full quality, but it will count against your data cap?

The whole point of net neutrality is to put the choice into the end user's hands and not the network providers hands, T-Mobile is simply offering the end users and additional choice, which fits quite nicely in with the spirit of the law for net neutrality.

Incidentally, when watching on a phone, the video quality is just as good as watching full quality. I could see if you were streaming to your TV or something that it might not be, but for most it is perfectly acceptable. But again, it is your choice as to what you want to use.
[doublepost=1458240549][/doublepost]

They just decided to go ahead and apply. This is borderline violating net neutrality, but I think since they allow any streaming site to join it is barely on the right side. That said regulators should watch them closely to ensure that they don't slip over to the other side.

It is actually nowhere near violating net neutrality, if for no other reason than the consumer can choose if they take advantage of a special offer or not.

 

[Zimmy68]

Man, this is one perk I really wish AT&T would copy, but know they never, ever will.

 

[nutmac]

If this isn't a violation of net neutrality, I guess nothing is.

I find net neutrality to be a fascinating topic. By same token, I think it is an overloaded term with too many principles.

In the strictest sense, T-Mobile violates net neutrality. Even as a defender, I must acknowledge that while T-Mobile complies with some of the principles, it is ultimately harder and expensive for smaller upstarts to comply with T-Mobile's requirements for Music Unlimited and Binge On. And that could ultimately hurt innovation.

For instance, if I was shopping for a paid subscription to TV or movie video streaming subscription service, I would more likely choose one that has free Binge On support.

Take Apple's iTunes video rental for instance. It is not among the service that qualifies for free streaming. So if I was on the road, I probably would purchase the rental from supported video rental services, such as Amazon and Google.

On the other hand, T-Mobile is offering free Binge On streaming on optional data plans (3GB or larger with unlimited Data Stash for existing customers and 6GB or larger with 20GB Data Stash for new).

Thanks to Music Unlimited and Binge On, my family's data usage has decreased dramatically. Ironically, that leaves much larger pool of data for whatever service we desire. My family is video chatting and streaming more from non-supported services that consumes smaller amount of data (i.e., no feature length movies or full sports game).

 

[0007776]

It is actually nowhere near violating net neutrality, if for no other reason than the consumer can choose if they take advantage of a special offer or not.

If they were to change their policy and start charging sites to be able to have access it would be a violation. They aren't so I'd say for the moment it isn't, but it would only take small changes for it to violate it.

 

[freepomme]

Yaaaaaaaay!!

 

[joshwenke]

Huh? How is this a violation of Net Neutrality?

Net Neutrality states that you cannot throttle certain websites or internet traffic in order to reduce the quality of the service. It also states that you cannot charge a particular type of traffic or site extra to use your network. So if T-Mobile went to YouTube and said pay us $10,000 a month and we won't count your traffic towards our users data caps, that would violate net neutrality. Instead they have gone to Youtube and said we would like to give our users a CHOICE of viewing your content at full quality and have it count against their data caps or watch at a reduced quality and have it not count against their data caps.

Binge On doesn't actually throttle anything, instead it offers consumers the choice: Do you want to reduce video quality and in exchange we will not count it towards your data cap? Or do you want to watch in full quality, but it will count against your data cap?

The whole point of net neutrality is to put the choice into the end user's hands and not the network providers hands, T-Mobile is simply offering the end users and additional choice, which fits quite nicely in with the spirit of the law for net neutrality.

Incidentally, when watching on a phone, the video quality is just as good as watching full quality. I could see if you were streaming to your TV or something that it might not be, but for most it is perfectly acceptable. But again, it is your choice as to what you want to use.
[doublepost=1458240549][/doublepost]
It is actually nowhere near violating net neutrality, if for no other reason than the consumer can choose if they take advantage of a special offer or not.

Thank you so much for posting this.

 

[gotluck]

dang, now it looks like i have to really consider tmobile. the 6s has band 12 so why not?

 

[2298754]

Do people seriously just sit around all day and stream video on their phones?

 

[SoAnyway]

This is better than that MLB news earlier this week.

 

[31 Flavas]

That's not the point of net neutrality! If you are a service not on the list of "partners", you can't turn 'Binge on' ON…

T-Mobile doesn't need to select you nor does a business need to pay any fee to be part of Binge ON. You simply need to identify your video traffic for T-Mobile.

Binge ON is 1) User defeatable 2) zero cost 3) open to everyone

Which is entirely different from Comcast which will only zero-rate their own content and AT&T / VZW who requires businesses to pay for the customers data use. Comcast is using their network to squeeze out and disfavor competition and AT&T / VZW who are disadvantaging small businesses who can't pay to play. That is inequality.

Binge ON gives everyone the same opportunity and favors no one.

 

[MrXiro]

Yes it does. Just to a lesser degree. Which can and should be considered a problem in and of itself. More and more traffic will go to mobile, not (fully) applying net neutrality there, makes it kind of pointless.
Of course, all this only applies to the US.

"Optional service", sure. But we know how things like that usually go. First, it's an optional service on one provider. It catches on, becomes an optional service on all providers. Then the first provider thinks, hey this is a great, I'll offer a contract with "Binge-on" only etc. Ok, this is a worst case scenario, but you never know.

But here is the point: All of this would be fine, as long as the provider treats all content equal. Which they don't.
Essentially, without net neutrality, you will have to pay your service provider more for access to more obscure data than to mainstream (i.e. YouTube, Netflix) data, although it is the same "dumb data" to the provider.

They technically were treating all video data equally which was why Youtube had the problem because they didn't opt in to have their video quality lowered (until now). Now that there is an opt-in on both ends consumer and provider end there really isn't an issue. Your hypothetical scenario can be applied to EVERYTHING though, that includes Communism/Socialism/Democracy governments to offering free burritos from Chipotle. The point is everything can be abused if you're going to talk hypothetically.

Your "problem" is easily solved by the lower tiered services merely opting in. Which is free and we have to believe will remain free until otherwise proven. Unless you believe in "guilty before proven innocent".

This has been debated Ad Nauseam at this point so I won't be debating it any further.

 

[31 Flavas]

"Optional service", sure. But we know how things like that usually go. First, it's an optional service on one provider. It catches on, becomes an optional service on all providers. Then the first provider thinks, hey this is a great, I'll offer a contract with "Binge-on" only etc. Ok, this is a worst case scenario, but you never know.

Wait, you feel that AT&T and Verizon and Comcast / TWI are going to start zero-rating in the same free and open manner as T-Mobile where they aren't favoring their own internal media content or requiring businesses to pay for / subsidize the customers data? They can copy that all they freaking hell they want.

But you know that they aren't going to copy T-Mobile because what T-Mobile is doing is devastating their attempts at net inequality. T-Mobile isn't "paving the way" for AT&T/VZW/Comcast/TWI net inequality, they're screwing them over.

But here is the point: All of this would be fine, as long as the provider treats all content equal. Which they don't.
Essentially, without net neutrality, you will have to pay your service provider more for access to more obscure data than to mainstream (i.e. YouTube, Netflix) data, although it is the same "dumb data" to the provider.

We went though this with "Music Freedom" -- the clarion call was that smaller providers / upstart providers / anyone that wants to attempt something new would be squeezed out -- Excluded from Music Freedom. Well, it's been nearly two years which providers, upstarts, or entrepreneurs have been shunned, excluded, or faced excessive technical hurdles, or even monetary hurdles caused by the demands to meet T-Mo's technical requirments to be included?

 

[milo]

You don't think being a "partner" for Binge on is free, do you?

Where has it been reported that it isn't free?

EDIT: Never mind, someone already posted a source showing that it is free.

 

[tonyr6]

Do people seriously just sit around all day and stream video on their phones?

No I just stream audio all day. Video I rather watch in HD on my 23" PC or 39" HDTV.

Binge on should help my father. He almost hit his 2GB cap a few times. He streams a lot of YouTube on his phone and he never cares about SD quality.

 

[cmwade77]

Do people seriously just sit around all day and stream video on their phones?

No, but I often find myself waiting in the car for my wife in school, etc. And in my car, I can hook up a device to the built-in screen, which has a maximum resolution of 480 anyway. So while I am waiting, I can be watching something without using any data. Additionally, while driving down the road, I can listen to the audio associated with the video. I can also listen to streaming music, thus meaning I no longer need things like Sirius radio, etc. and can save a lot of money in monthly services.
[doublepost=1458323841][/doublepost]

T-Mobile doesn't need to select you nor does a business need to pay any fee to be part of Binge ON. You simply need to identify your video traffic for T-Mobile.

Binge ON is 1) User defeatable 2) zero cost 3) open to everyone

Which is entirely different from Comcast which will only zero-rate their own content and AT&T / VZW who requires businesses to pay for the customers data use. Comcast is using their network to squeeze out and disfavor competition and AT&T / VZW who are disadvantaging small businesses who can't pay to play. That is inequality.

Binge ON gives everyone the same opportunity and favors no one.

Exactly and Comcast's and AT&T/ VZW's setups will most likely be found to violate net neutrality.

This actually can help startups, because ANYONE can apply to be a Binge On partner, the only requirement that T-Mobile seems to have is that video packets are easily identifiable separately from all other traffic from your site. From a technical standpoint, that is a very simple thing to do. So, as a result, konwing this requirement, a startup company can set this up from the very beginning with little to no extra setup cost; however, revamping an existing system may take time and money, so the startup is actually in a better position to take advantage of this than the big companies were.

 

[Sea Bass]

Binge On is annoying for those on unlimited plans. I'd like to use my data to watch videos in HD, thank you very much.

 

[hobspain]

1) there's zero chance that all the content providers in BingOn are not paying the operator a fee to have the privilege of having unlimited access to their customers. Providers have to be paying T-Mobile somehow.

2) if it issue under discussion was the waste of higher resolution video on mobile devices T-Mobile could reward *any* content provider that enforces certain lowered quality video when streaming to mobile devices of their network by not counting this traffic into their users. Not gonna happen.

3) it is obvious that having a flat rate of anything makes you consume more. Even at lowered quality, the amount of video traffic consumed will multiply. As we know, mobile network bandwidth is limited (much more than fixed) and it cannot be increased easily nor quickly. This will mean that other traffic will suffer. It's yet to be seen if this other traffic is throttled down or everything will start to stutter.

 

[MrXiro]

Well that was unexpected. Curious how YouTube/Google worked out their differences with T-Mobile


Anyway cue another thread to open up the carrier wars and TMO defenders

Google Play Music was already on the list for TMo's Music Freedom. It's not THAT big of a surprise unless you're not good at putting obvious facts together.

It amazes me that there are people exist that feel the need to bash TMo despite how much positive change they've actually done to the mobile industry over the last 2 years. I jumped over to them from At&t and Sprint and despite some really horrible communication between their sales reps and new promotions they are a far superior service than either At&t and Sprint. They have faster LTE speeds than both and are willing to work with you to keep you as opposed to Sprint who pretty much told me to not let the door hit me on the way out when I told them I was thinking about switching over to At&t (4 years ago).

I've also used Verizon for my iPad when I had gotten an LTE iPad. While the service was fine I was not happy with how their employees treated customers. I accidentally burned my SIM while trying to change my data plan and they were doing their damndest not to give me a new one.

For the record At&t has the best customer service of any of the big 4 in the US so I'm not biased, they just suck with the trying to nickel and dime all of their customers.

 

[lordofthereef]

Net neutrality in this case isn't so much about the user (well, in the long run it is), but more about the providers of a service. You don't think being a "partner" for Binge on is free, do you? Of course, if you are YouTube or Netflix, you can afford the service charge. If you are Vimeo or Spotify, currently not on the partner list, they probably can as well in the future. But what about smaller/new services? They are at a disadvantage competing with the big players anyway. If users are incentivized to only use the big players (able to pay the Binge on service charge) because that is/can be cheaper for them, then for those smaller services it will be even harder to find an audience.

It actually is free to be a partner. The content provider simply has to provide tmobike with the data necessary to properly and efficiently identify the video stream. In the case of YouTube, it took this long because not all of their videos were being served up the same way and tmobike servers weren't able to properly identify 100% of the video streams.

Obviously there was a cost involved on Google part here but it wasn't the sort of cost you're implying. There is no "entry fee" so to speak.

Here is a quote from there recent press release:
"Beyond that, Binge On has always been completely free and open to any and all legit video streaming services. No money changes hands between T-Mobile and content providers. Anyone can join. In fact, T-Mobile is currently responding to and working with more than 50 additional streaming services eager to be a part of Binge On."

You can find the article below. But they've made similar statements and claims since day one. I would think if there is a cost of entry and they're blatantly lying about it, some content provider would have spilled the beans by now.

https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and-blogs/binge-on-update.htm

[doublepost=1458377349][/doublepost]

1) there's zero chance that all the content providers in BingOn are not paying the operator a fee to have the privilege of having unlimited access to their customers. Providers have to be paying T-Mobile somehow.
.

See my response to the previous poster.
[doublepost=1458377842][/doublepost]

Binge On is annoying for those on unlimited plans. I'd like to use my data to watch videos in HD, thank you very much.

You absolutely csn do this. What is annoying about it? You can opt out by logging into your account in a desktop, or even easier through the smartphone app. The latter doesn't even require logging in if you're off of WiFi.
[doublepost=1458378073][/doublepost]

Well that was unexpected. Curious how YouTube/Google worked out their differences with T-Mobile


y

Google issue was that t-mobile was compressing video regardless of whether it was a partners video and we're not very clear about it. They were absolutely right to question this and t-mobile, as a result, changed their user agreement.

As far as why they weren't on the list from the beginning, I've tried my best to explain that above. There were a few articles that covered this when the service was first announced, so I'm lead to believe they're factual. Difficult to find them now (Else is link) since there have been many subsequent press releases and news stories regarding binge on.
[doublepost=1458378720][/doublepost]

Is there a source for that? Couldn't find one.

But even if it is free (for now), as a provider you still need to apply and be accepted. There is no guarantee this will always be (or even was) the case.

I agree, for a customer this sounds like good deal right now (ignoring the question about quality), but it is another step towards net un-neutrality. And in the long run, that won't be good for customers.

I provided the best source I could find (T-mobile own press release) above, though I read a few articles early on that claimed the same.

As far as t-mobile charging in the future, I agree that would be a concern, but I feel like that's something to take issue with if that does happen. I personally feel like there isn't much sense in going down the "what if route", because there really isn't a reason to think this is going to happen

among other things this is a way to lessen the load on towers. Simply having binge on turned on lessens the load in all forms of video and providers that opt in are able.ro give tmobike the information necessary to further optimize said video.

That said, anyone who still believes it's a net neutrality issue has the right to feel that way. I'm not even trying to change opinions. But I feel like quite a few people don't understand how the service works and are formulating opinions without all the information.
[doublepost=1458378921][/doublepost]

I thought this is brilliant but turning on binge-on does make watching video from none supported site almost unwatchable. It buffers like crazy, I think maybe because this is a result of realtime encoding to a much lower file size from the original source. I mean everytime! I feel like I wanna throw my phone everytime it happens, it's ridiculous!

What sites have you had issues with. Admittedly I haven't used everything under the sun, but my son watches a ton of YouTube kids content well before YouTube was a partner and it's been great, no buffering or anything. This is on a 6s and 6s plus.

Again, not trying to discredit your statement or experience, just curious if I might be able to replicate your situation.
[doublepost=1458379018][/doublepost]

Just wanted to point out that Spotify is in fact part of the unlimited streaming program with T-Mobile.

http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/free-music-streaming.html

Maybe the videos in spotify still count? (Not saying for sure, I don't use the service, just thinking out loud)
[doublepost=1458379406][/doublepost]

Video providers can now request to not be throttled either, so Binge On is optional for both providers and users
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/17/11253582/t-mobile

Wow. That's a nice move.

 

[rigormortis]

my favorite subject to troll about and what personally upsets me about binge on that no one else seems to complain about is that T-Mobile requires a CREDIT CHECK and a POST PAID plan for Binge on. but does not require a CREDIT CHECK and a POST PAID plan for music freedom.

if you activate your ipad on a month to month basis and do not submit to a credit check and pay $35 month at the beginning of the billing cycle for 6 GB of data you get music freedom but you are screwed out of a Binge on and Data Stash

if you submit to a credit check and pay $35 for 6 gb of data at the end of the billing cycle, you get Binge on benefits.

the button to turn binge on and off is located at my.t-mobile.com , which is a website that pre paid ipad users are not allowed on. only customers with a post paid ipad plan can go to that website. prepaid customers go to mim.t-mobile.com ( aka Connect Me ) where no binge on/off switch EXISTS.

without a login for my.t-mobile.com there does not seem to be any place where you can even look up how much data stash you have.


I don't understand why everyone is so up in arms about ' net neutrality ' and will debate it for years. but requiring a credit check for binge on does not seem to upset anyone, and everyone is fine with it.

i don't think the average person has ever really tried prepaid ipad internet from t-mobile to know that it does not include benefits that are only given to post paid accounts.


another thing is T-mobile does not charge any tax or fees on your post paid ipad plan. so there is no real reason why anyone should have prepaid internet from T-mobile. they should all move to post paid.

mexico and canada is included on both plans. but video and data stash is not. kind of weird i think

as far as the claim that t-mobile does not throttle video, go get Amazon instant video, and use it to download a prime movie or tv show ( which is supported ) over cellular and see how slow the download takes versus downloading content from other partners.
[doublepost=1458423492][/doublepost]does binge on throttle video speeds? YES, and this is how you prove it.

experiment:
i used amazon video on demand
i downloaded ' a friend in need ' , this was season 1 episode 10 of he-man and the masters of the universe.
documents and data for amazon video said i had 247 mb after the download. this may not reflect how much
one episode is. as i might have other content. we need to see what this is at the next section
i used the ' better ' setting on all downloads.
i turned off binge on and waited the full 3 minutes
download time with bjnge on turned off was 2 minutes and 37 seconds
#932# stated that i used 567 mb total for the period ( this is not really relevant) its just to show in the next section that the data was white listed


i turned on binge on and waited the full 3 minutes
i downloaded ' dragon invasion ' which is season one episode 9 of He-man and the Masters of the Universe.
download time was 21 minutes and 58 seconds
documents and data for amazon video was now 489 mb
#932# says 573.14 mb used

 

[Michael Goff]

Huh? How is this a violation of Net Neutrality?

Neutrality states that you cannot throttle certain websites or internet traffic in order to reduce the quality of the service. It also states that you cannot charge a particular type of traffic or site extra to use your network. So if T-Mobile went to YouTube and said pay us $10,000 a month and we won't count your traffic towards our users data caps, that would violate net neutrality. Instead they have gone to Youtube and said we would like to give our users a CHOICE of viewing your content at full quality and have it count against their data caps or watch at a reduced quality and have it not count against their data caps.

Binge On doesn't actually throttle anything, instead it offers consumers the choice: Do you want to reduce video quality and in exchange we will not count it towards your data cap? Or do you want to watch in full quality, but it will count against your data cap?

The whole point of net neutrality is to put the choice into the end user's hands and not the network providers hands, T-Mobile is simply offering the end users and additional choice, which fits quite nicely in with the spirit of the law for net neutrality.

Incidentally, when watching on a phone, the video quality is just as good as watching full quality. I could see if you were streaming to your TV or something that it might not be, but for most it is perfectly acceptable. But again, it is your choice as to what you want to use.
[doublepost=1458240549][/doublepost]
It is actually nowhere near violating net neutrality, if for no other reason than the consumer can choose if they take advantage of a special offer or not.

And the fact is that Binge On throttles websites unless they opt out if they're not a partner. How do you think it worked?

 

[lordofthereef]

Tmobile claiming they don't throttle video is simply a semantics game folks. They're taking the video and compressing the data and serving you the compressed data. In their opinion (and in the strictest definition of the term), data compression is not the same as throttling.

If it helps, you can think of this as being analogous to when you ripped songs from your compact discs onto your computer. You probably did that as an mp3 or similar file (let's assume not lossless). What you're essentially doing is compressing that file into a much smaller file and losing quality depending I the bitrate. This is effectively what tmobile is doing on the fly with these video files.

I'm not saying this because I feel it's right or wrong, just trying to state why the terminology is used. There seems to be a whole lot of misinformation and confusion about what is actually going on behind the scenes with this relatively new feature tmobile has added to their toolbox. Assuming my opinion is wanted, I don't personally feel like throttling is the correct terminology for what binge on is doing, however I fully understand the meaning and reason behind why would many care to use the term as such.

 

[OneMike]

Binge on defaulted to "on" for my device a few months ago. I didn't think it was at first as there were two screens where it shows the binge status. The initial said it was off.

I was literally ready to cancel t-mobile. Everything was beyond slow. Digging around I found another option and things were back to normal.