Mobile’s Legere To Critic YouTube: Binge On Not ‘Bad Thing’

What Binge On does, it includes a proprietary technology and what the technology does is not only detect the video stream but select the appropriate bit rate to optimize to the video, the mobile device.

A couple of weeks ago, YouTube and Google reached out to the Wall Street Journal because they had concerns about T-Mobile’s Binge On. But Binge On is right at the edge of what is permitted by the net neutrality rules the FCC enacted in 2015. In it, the CEO noted that T-Mobile’s data-saving feature has added a number of new partners and, at the same time, Legere criticized reports that Binge On “throttles” users’ smartphones and tablets. Have you experienced any issues with T-Mobile’s Binge On program or does it suit your streaming needs? You get the same quality of video as watching a DVD but now use only one third as much of your data, or of course no data when it’s a BingOn content provider. Being that video usage is a huge portion of what people are using on their phones nowadays this would seem like an excellent solution that T-Mobile has provided its customers, but as we are beginning to find out it’s not that simple. “When you stream video from a participating site with Binge On, it never subtracts any data from your plan”. And what YouTube is annoyed about is the fact that even though it is not a signed-up member of T-Mobile BingeOn service, its videos are also throttled down to 480p, when many smartphones can handle 1080p resolution. “Who the hell do they think they are?” On Thursday afternoon, not long after he blogged in support of Binge On and in an attempt to silence its critics, he tweeted a video wherein he asked a rather pointed series of questions to the Electronic Frontier Foundation – “Who the [profanity] are you EFF, (and) why are you stirring up so much trouble, and who pays you?”

The organization found that T-Mobile slowed mobile Internet speeds for Binge On users whether they were watching something live or downloading to view videos to watch later.

YouTube complained that T-Mobile was interfering with its video streams, throttling and degrading the quality of its videos, even though it’s not among video services included in Binge On’s program.

“Some say this could violate the principles of net neutrality, which seeks to treat all Internet traffic as equal and free-flowing”. This is to prevent internet service providers from abusing the power they have over their networks to leverage higher fees from content providers and customers alike.

“T-Mobile’s new “streaming optimization” program appears to involve throttling of all video traffic, across all data plans, regardless of network congestion”, the group said in a statement.