Google's convergence (i.e. bundling Fi+Fiber) in this space would be exciting if they could get their MVNO pricing competitive but I guess they'd have to buy T-Mobile or Sprint to make that happen because they're not going to sell minutes or data at a loss.
If there isn't ample competition or near perfect legislation, it doesn't matter what you pay, the service will eventually be held by a monopoly that can do almost whatever they damn well please.
You don't fight monopolies by paying more money, because as long as that's your only focus, the bar to entering the market will continue to rise until eventually you can't afford the `good guy`.
It's even cheaper if you don't opt out of BingeOn and can tolerate DVD (480p24) quality video streaming on your wireless device.
Hopefully enough people care about this to influence the FCC before T-Mobile meets them on January 15th to discuss their Binge On program as per: http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/01/t-mobiles-video-thro...
If what telekom is trying in germany is a any indication, the plan is to move all traffic to the BingeOn mode. After that, they degrade services that are not paying them and zero-rate + allow higher bitrates for services that pay them.
But "paying" is not cash if the talk in our startup scene is to be believed. Telekom is pulling out of startup incubating (after failing miserably) and are trying to use their position as an intermediary to get equity off of every new startup.
How? Imagine a new startup "meflixtube": growth is good, funding is secured, everything looks great. Telekom notices and says "would be a shame if something degrading would happen to your service, ey? give us a few percent of equity and you'll get zero-rated, undegraded access to our customers". Now instead of getting a few $$$, they are in line to get a few 100 million $$$ when a few of the new startups take off. They can even make sure that the startups they have "convinced" don't get any competition by refusing the same deal to competitors.
tl;dr: Telekom is not after customer money, their customer base is the market they "offer" to companies and zero-rated, undegraded data is their gate.
I find "proprietary technology" claims amusing because to me that is such an obviously bad thing, and bragging about it is like General Mills bragging that every box of Wheaties is contaminated with mercury and PCBs.
"degrade services that are not paying them" and "allow higher bitrates for services that pay them" would even more blatantly violate FCC net neutrality in the US.
T-Mobile here is circumventing this by only zero-rating with an opt-out mechanism. If they tried to pull a stunt like Deutsche Telekom in Germany, they'd be fined in no time by the FCC in a clear and shut case. They are doing something far more subtle here in the US.
EDIT: For clarity, Deutsche Telekom is a majority shareholder of T-Mobile USA.
So other carriers sure could implement the same thing, but nobody is crazy enough to do that until they figure out how T-Mobile subscribers and the FCC respond.
Here's an announcement: http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/fcc-approves-net-neutral...
The reality is that wireless bandwidth is constrained and sustained transfers at high rates degrade the overall experience of everyone using a particular cellular tower. T-Mobile, being particularly bandwidth constrained, is attempting to mitigate this issue. They're doing it by offering a service where if you allow your bandwidth for certain content types to be be throttled, then the bandwidth you use for certain qualifying services won't count against your data cap. They're offering a carrot, not threatening with a stick.
Yes it's opt-out, but that was probably done intentionally because most folks won't notice the degradation or won't care, AND, more importantly, most people wouldn't bother to enable it if it were opt-in. If T-Mobile made it opt-in then their adoption rate would be lower so by making opt-out they're getting the greatest benefit.
I just looked at my account and the toggle to turn Binge On off is easily accessible in my user profile. It's not a buried feature anywhere. The only possible gripe I could see is that the setting is granular and per-line making it marginally harder to disable, but that's also a benefit. I have multiple lines on my account but only 1 has unlimited data, so the ability to disable it for just that one line is nice and allows me to have my cake and eat it too.
“T-Mobile utilizes streaming video optimization technology throughout its network to help customers stretch their high-speed data while streaming video.”
EFF:
T-Mobile seems to be arguing that downgrading video quality is not actually throttling, but we disagree. "Throttling" means that when a video stream hits T-Mobile's network, its bandwidth is capped. If the video provider's server has the capability to adapt the quality of the video, then the server can do that—but it is the video provider that is using "adaptive video technology," not T-Mobile. In other words, T-Mobile just constrains the bandwidth, and it's up to video providers to make sure their videos stream smoothly.
This isn't semantics—it's apples and oranges.
If T-Mobile wanted to give its customers more choice, it would have made Binge On opt-in, not opt-out. And if Binge On was really about helping customers stretch their data, then T-Mobile wouldn’t have automatically enabled Binge On for customers with unlimited data. They would also zero-rate all videos they throttle, not just the videos of providers who have enrolled.
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/binge-lite-ask-truth-a...
The EFF is right that it's throttling and T-Mobile is right for not wanting to call it throttling for very obvious reasons. And It is also "adaptive video technology", the EFF seems to think that term has any predefined meaning but it doesn't, T-Mobile literally made it up.
I disagree with the EFF's assertions about opt-in vs opt-out, they seems to not want to accept reality and why T-Mobile is doing this. T-Mobile, and anyone who isn't AT&T or Verizon, is very bandwidth constrained because of the way spectrum is auctioned off. They are trying to maintain acceptable service for their customers but can't if everyone is streaming 1080p video from the internet. While throttling is usually a poor decision for bandwidth management, persistent streaming is an exception where it helps. By turning this on by default, they're freeing up a lot of congestion. Most people won't know or care and those that do have a way to turn the service off.
That being said, T-Mobile isn't just degrading service, they're offering you incentives for accepting the degraded service. If you don't want the offering, you can turn it off easily.
T-Mobile's network is one of the weakest, if not the weakest, of the big 4 telcos. It's theirs or Sprint's. I went with them anyway because they appeared to be "less evil" than Verizon or ATT. But after all is said and done, if I'm a slave to a hostile corporate overload anyway, I may as well get good coverage.
After the last few weeks of T-Mobile and their CEO's shenanigans, I'll just go with Verizon from now on.
In most markets, TM can't compete head-to-head with the dominant LTE provider in that market. If other MNOs follow T-Mobile's lead (certainly not a given, but a possibility), then this moves the playing field to WiFi. And T-Mobile may prefer to play there.
For example, they were the first as far as I can tell to launch extensive WiFi calling and WiFi SMS, even extending to some American airlines (at least for WiFi SMS - calling is possible but socially unaccepted on planes).
Wireless carriers as a general rule are all looking at WiFi offload capabilities especially as 802.11ad and up provide higher transmission rates (peak and average theoreticals).
There is a race to perfect and bring to market seamless WiFi-base station handoffs (both ways) in real-world conditions. I suspect that will require a combination of channel (i.e. mobile devices) + wireless network upgrades, so in the meantime carriers need to bridge the gap. This is arguably a pretty good strategy assuming T-Mobile is expecting WiFi to handle even more of their traffic overtime.
Of course every carrier wants you using wifi instead of their network. Its not their expense, but you would still be paying them for it. But people are not subscribing to often ludicrous mobile plan bills to be told to not use it.
We absolutely have the technology to provide a huge swathe of people broadband (as per the new FCC relabel) Internet access through long-range transmission based tech like GSM CDMA or WIMAX. That makes it insane to propose laying physical wire in the dirt or making an interconnected mesh of low power wifi routers as a substitute. The only real barrier is the draconian privatization of photons that makes up spectrum regulation. If we had a 95% open spectrum with some restricted for government and emergency communications you could easily have broad spectrum towers that could adapt to congestion and pair them with radios that will adapt frequency to optimize for range vs data rate vs congestion.
The limitations are entirely artificial and that should be pissing people off.
If you exclude MVNOs
The EFF does represent the concerns that most ordinary internet users should have but I don't know that I would say most of the do have those concerns.
We think of bandwidth in terms of maximum throughput, which makes sense for a dedicated circuit, since often the customer of a dedicated circuit plans to keep it nearly saturated (consider an office phone system, for example).
We also care about latency and packet loss, but these are generally application specific concerns. Internet browsing works pretty well with high latency, but VOIP does not.
Generally, it's always possible to overbuild the circuit and exceed the minimum performance requirements. A small office could install a second T1 to handle the extremely rare case of all phones and all fax machines being in use at once, but it may prefer to save the money and use a single T1. The second T1 could be viewed along the lines of an insurance policy against a usage spike, and the decision not to buy it could be considered "living dangerously" or voluntarily exposing the company to that risk in exchange for money saved.
T-Mobile is not selling a dedicated bandwidth circuit to its customers, in spite of what the EFF wants us to feel indignant about. Yes, we all know the slippery slope the EFF is concerned about, but what T-Mobile is doing is quite reasonable.
Imagine that you are the only person using a cable modem in the whole neighborhood. There is ample bandwidth available to you. But if all the neighbors are also using it, there is throttling and prioritization going on so that the finite bandwidth can be shared optimally.
What does optimally mean? That is very much in the eye of the beholder. Maybe you play network games and would prefer that the network be optimized for low latency and UDP. Maybe your neighbor runs a BitTorrent node. Maybe someone down the street downloads raw SETI data for some kind of analysis. Each person has a different optimal QoS that he/she wishes the service provider would impose on everyone else.
T-Mobile has strong incentives to keep its customers happy. By analyzing the bandwidth usage, it has found a way to offer bandwidth at a lower cost by imposing a specific kind of QoS filter on the data.
This is precisely the purpose of QoS, being able to "stretch" bandwidth to accommodate more traffic by placing limits and prioritization on the traffic, with the goal of meeting all of the application specific requirements that the circuit would ideally meet.
So, quite reasonably, T-Mobile has found a way to constrain some of the most egregious bandwidth hogging behavior its customers do, and has engineered a way to offer the constrained service at an improved price and packaged in a way so customers perceive greater value from the service.
Yes, there might be someone trying to download SETI data over the T-Mobile LTE connection, or trying to compete in networked gaming, or all sorts of edge cases, but like Amazon's choice of which products it offers as Prime, T-Mobile has chosen a broadly appealing QoS filter which will result in most customers perceiving better value.
Additionally, it allows T-Mobile to leverage content providers in infrastructure planning risk, which helps reduce the amount of bandwidth speculation going on, and overall makes the circuit perform more like a dedicated circuit. This point is subtle but true.
So while the T-Mobile CEO seems a bit over the top, the EFF has (I think) gone over the line in an ill-conceived attack on one of the more progressive service providers. I personally donate to the EFF and proudly display the laptop sticker, but I also understand QoS and the complexity of shared infrastructure planning.
Personally my only concern is that zero rating only applies to video providers that sign up with them. If they want to be good corporate citizens, I think they should zero rate all the streams they detect as video, so there's a 1:1 mapping between zero rated and throttled.
I live in New York, where many many people's only connection to the Internet is on their phone. They have no home wifi. With this plan, t-mobile just became way more cost effective for those people if they want to watch tons of video.
Is it the first step down a slippery slope? I don't know. But this first step is awfully appealing from my point of view as a cheapskate consumer.
(My views here do not in any way represent the opinions of my employer.)
I say this as a customer :/
The sales department. Am I right, engineers?
That's just comedy.
He is backpedaling and now saying that "innovation" can be controversial.
In the US, the fact that most regulation is at the Federal level, implies that such a move will be relatively unconstrained by local governments and less burdened by franchise fees and right of way agreements and negotiations with power companies for stringing wires on poles. I suspect that regulations requiring big carriers to provide access on their networks and access to their exchanges may be another advantage, but I'm not a telecom lawyer.
It's probably a necessary move as video increasingly dominates bandwidth consumption. And my experience is that competition in the cable market tends to lead to better service.
I'm not really sure this is a bigger affront to net neutrality than some CDN delivering stale content or Google and Bing customizing my search results. It's just that we've come to accept those things and tend to heap hate on cable company business practices.
Nearly by definition, "cable company business practices" means shared bandwidth circuits, the business practices in question being network QoS attempts to make it profitable to offer shared network services at low cost.
I'd love to see a mathematical analysis of how much FIOS would cost if everyone got a 100% dedicated circuit at anything close to the advertised specs.
The hubbub about T-Mobile's policy is a misguided rant which idealistically supposes that all bandwidth should be sold in some idealized "dedicated" way with no QoS imposed. It certainly could be sold that way, but at a much higher price.
Founded July 6, 1990; 25 years ago. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation)
What a curious definition of forever. I'm not always sure when the EFF is more interested in protecting digital rights or self-promotion. Some statements sure feel like the later.
One add on to my own comment is that I forgot is that there is an allegation that Tmo is applying "video optimization" to content other than bingeon, which if true is a clear violation. It also is possible they are just incompetent too because that type of system they are using has to be programmed based on the 5-tuple source or destinations (and some other parameters) which it would not surprise me if they screwed that up).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10861391
(still ranked ~80)
http://www.fastcompany.com/3046877/who-the-is-this-guy-john-...
Be offensive, get millions of customers.
