T-Mobile Unveils Doubled Data Plans, Free Video Streaming at Un-Carrier X Event

AbSoluTc said:
They're watching T-Mobile and laughing because of what they have to do in order to get more customers. Verizon and AT&T have nothing to worry about and won't change anything because of this. It sucks but that's how it works when your one of the two largest, best networks in the US.
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I was able to buy my 6S outright with no contract on launch day. Say what you want about Tmobile, at least they're trying and it has affected Verizon/AT&T. Carriers killing off 2 year contracts is proof of that. Carriers are slowly losing their stranglehold on customers and that's a good thing.
 
Anyone that lives in a metro area that complains about T-Mobile coverage clearly has never used T-Mobile. T-Mobile can struggle is less populated areas and on some highways. This is improving, but still far behind the big 2. That being said, if you are rarely in rural america and only travel to cities, T-Mobile is a fantastic service.
 
People will end up using a LOT more video now than before just because it's free. So I think this has the possibility of backfiring. Then again, it does use a special compression method specifically for this, so who knows.
 
slu said:
Anyone that lives in a metro area that complains about T-Mobile coverage clearly has never used T-Mobile. T-Mobile can struggle is less populated areas and on some highways. This is improving, but still far behind the big 2. That being said, if you are rarely in rural america and only travel to cities, T-Mobile is a fantastic service.
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Nope, I've used Tmobile in North NJ and it doesn't work for me. Dropped calls, spotty reception inside my home (although in all fairness ATT isn't great in my house either), the worst is when going to work in a hospital is having 5 bars of Tmobile signal when entering, and having no service by the time I get to my office.

Every time I see one of these incredible Tmobile innovations I get so jealous, but then I remind myself I actually need my phone to work and everything else is secondary. For those of you who get great reception I'm incredibly jealous you get to use an awesome company like Tmobile.
 
Yakuzahi said:
this HTML class. Value is Good for you, but fo


Good for you, but for me, it doesn't work. Most of the day I am driving in NJ and on Long Island; it sucks.
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I live in NJ and frequent the NY and Philly areas. Rarely lose LTE in Jersey and NYC and Philly are rock solid. Traveling to the likes of Tennessee or North Carolina on a couple road trips I took, that's another story. Definitely a bunch of Edge.
 
vampyr said:
I guess my point is... do you REALLY think T-mobile is doing this out of the kindness of their heart? Do you REALLY think they are going to give away data for free?
Hell to the no... they are making deals with all of those video services to collect information about HOW you watch their videos. GPS will tell T-Mobile where you are when you are watching them, what bandwidth you are using... are you moving or stationary? what type of content do you watch the most? What time of the day are you watching? how often do you pause and play? what other apps were you using just before you started watching a video? What link did you use to get the video to come up?

Personally, I think it's downright wrong that a company charges me to use their service, but profit off of my usage behavior. But what can I do? I'm only 1 voice.
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Lots of assumptions and conspiracy theories in your post without anything concrete other than pretty much describing Google's business model. Just having the free streaming would actually help those services GAIN more subscribers and yes, T-Mobile is a business they want more customers and to make money.

I don't think it's anything as nefarious as you describe but you do sound like "one of those people." It's 2015, how much privacy do you REALLY have?

There is an option though: You don't have to actually use the "Binge" service. Shocking, right?
 
Michael Goff said:
The idea comes from T-Mobile not having all streaming. Ergo, it favors some video over others. That's where people get the Net Neutrality argument from.
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Well yeah because it's just launching. The way it's presented, like music, it's open to any and all comers who fit the "technical requirements." It's starting with more partners than the music streaming did. I think these people need to give it some time for it to be up and running and let the services that wanna join in do so.
 
mconk said:
Coverage is very rapidly increasing. It's not perfect yet, but the fact that they've gone from zero LTE in 2013 to now 302m pops is pretty incredible. Also, I wish I had more examples of expanded coverage areas, but here's one I stumbled upon earlier showing the rapid growth rate. It's nuts how fast they're expanding! Not saying it's anywhere near perfect, but you can't deny that they aren't trying and exceeding everyone's expectations. The goal for LTE coverage by the end of 2015 was 300m pops...they're now covering 302m, and growing. Check out this GIF of coverage in Michigan as an example:

http://m.imgur.com/vXVW47V
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The problem I have is that they are mostly just upgrading their existing towers to LTE and I can't see where they are putting up any new towers. I often carry around a pre-paid AT&T phone for making calls for when I can't use my T-Mobile :(.

I found that coverage maps are exaggerated by all the providers.
 
Isn't this a violation to net neutrality? They are giving special treatment to "partners", which happen to be some of the largest streaming companies in the world over other services.
 
DJTBD said:
How is TMO USA prioritizing data in this deal to go against net neutrality? If anything its the reverse, TMO is telling their customers if they watch video at a lower quality it wont count towards their data but if they choose to watch at a higher quality it will use their data normally. This puts the control with the consumer on how their data is used and not the company TMO is not forcing any sort of specific way for data to be used just offering an option.
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Mind you, I don't agree with this -- but the theory, similar to skeptics of Music Freedom, is that T-Mobile could use this it 'favor' a select group of video providers. Currying disfavor to those that cost customers data. But, as we saw with Music Freedom -- this anti-competative FUD / conspiracy was unfounded.

To be clear, this IS unequal treatment of data. But, considering that the system 1) can be user deactivated / user defeated 2) There is no charge to the consumer or any video provider to either enable or disable and 3) Won't favor or disfavor any video provider -- It shouldn't pose any problems. Or, in other words, this system favors consumers instead of restricting or otherwise limiting customer choice or speed of access. As such, it is unlikely to be any concern to the FCC.

Which is entirely different from what Comcast or Time Warner or Cox (etc..) would like to use unequal treatment of data for.
 
Ashf0rd said:
Yeah, bit of a shame considering most of the streaming I do on cellular (video wise) is from YouTube.
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In the Q&A section of the following the announcement -- this was the very first question asked. "Where is YouTube? Why isn't YouTube included?"

The answer was that its on YouTube / Google. They asked, but didn't get any response. T-Mobile needs is a way to reliably identify video from non-video. You can email any of them directly John, Mike, Nevel or just email bingeon@t-mobile.com and they will tell you exactly what they need from you to exempt your video content / include your website in Binge On.

That said, John, the CEO, said as soon as YouTube responds, provides us with what we need, and asks to be included -- The answer is "YES!"
 
i-John said:
Isn't this a violation to net neutrality? They are giving special treatment to "partners", which happen to be some of the largest streaming companies in the world over other services.
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Their argument is that it isn't because no money is changing hands. If you run a video streaming service: email them, give them a way to identify which data is video, and apparently, you're in.

Basically, the reason why not every service is included from the outset is because of the technical challenge of positively identifying every video stream traversing their network.
 
480p, though? I can't bare to watch anything in 480p...I'll just stick with my unlimited data plan...and make sure the free streaming option is toggled off.
 
Swagged said:
480p, though? I can't bare to watch anything in 480p...I'll just stick with my unlimited data plan...and make sure the free streaming option is toggled off.
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90% of people won't notice a difference on their phones-480P is DVD quality. 1080p is overkill anyways unless your streaming to a tv.
 
I can't imagine how they make money. Either data is really cheap and cost the carriers next to nothing to send or they have a crazy CEO who will drive their company into the ground.
 
Plutonius said:
The problem I have is that they are mostly just upgrading their existing towers to LTE and I can't see where they are putting up any new towers. I often carry around a pre-paid AT&T phone for making calls for when I can't use my T-Mobile :(.

I found that coverage maps are exaggerated by all the providers.
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They're expanding to new areas quite rapidly. See Michigan, ND and SD as just a few examples.

ggibson913 said:
I can't imagine how they make money. Either data is really cheap and cost the carriers next to nothing to send or they have a crazy CEO who will drive their company into the ground.
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Data really is cheap, despite what the big two make you think. They're far from being run into the ground (clearly the opposite).
 
T-Mobile Please bring your business North of the Border! We Canadians need this kind of shake up... Although we have WindMobile - they are relatively new so their network is limited still...
 
BeSweeet said:
They're expanding to new areas quite rapidly. See Michigan, ND and SD as just a few examples.

Data really is cheap, despite what the big two make you think. They're far from being run into the ground (clearly the opposite).
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Data is cheap, however the issue lies in the fact that Cellular service is not infinite. It has limits and those limits can quickly be seen at large events when cell service is disrupted because the congestion is too great. The towers, cannot handle the load. Now, imagine everyone using 10-20 gig a month and you can see how this becomes a problem. I'm not saying the mobile providers are innocent, they are not. They need to mitigate this by updating the network, expanding it and staying on top of problems. A few years back, most users were voice or txt. Now, it's mostly data and LOTS of it.

If they don't stay on top of this, the problem is only going to get worse. Too many people on a network and not enough bandwidth to support them creates slowness and bottlenecks.
 
AbSoluTc said:
Data is cheap, however the issue lies in the fact that Cellular service is not infinite. It has limits and those limits can quickly be seen at large events when cell service is disrupted because the congestion is too great. The towers, cannot handle the load. Now, imagine everyone using 10-20 gig a month and you can see how this becomes a problem. I'm not saying the mobile providers are innocent, they are not. They need to mitigate this by updating the network, expanding it and staying on top of problems. A few years back, most users were voice or txt. Now, it's mostly data and LOTS of it.

If they don't stay on top of this, the problem is only going to get worse. Too many people on a network and not enough bandwidth to support them creates slowness and bottlenecks.
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Right. Which I think is why all (or at least the top 3) are continuing to densify their network where needed to best address this. Speeds across most of the country are increasing. Coverage is increasing. People are seeing better plans and better perks. Things seem good overall.
 
whodatrr said:
I could be wrong, but I thin that T-Mobile is doing this, that, and the other things to grab market share. Let's face it, a couple years ago they were the bottom-feeder of the market. Still, they're number 3 at best. But the only way that they can grab share is to shake things up and change the way that carriers behave, which is what they're trying to do. They are now grabbing share and even luring customers like me who would never have previously considered them. This, along with the fact that they're building out their network.

That's my take.
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Exactly right. They need more customers to generate more revenue in order to build out their network. Now, better network+previous perks=more customers and market share, which generates even more revenue which allows for more network expansion and gets even more customers. It's a nice way to grow your company and John Legere is a great spokesman. I bet he can throw one hell of a party. :D
 
Ashf0rd said:
Yeah, bit of a shame considering most of the streaming I do on cellular (video wise) is from YouTube.
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You could get YouTube Red and download the videos while on wifi...and then watch them whenever, regardless of connection.
 
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