![]() ![]() ![]() The Electronic Frontier Foundation and a number of journalists have also raised concerns about the fairness of the program, but the Stanford study may be the most forthcoming to date about the legality of Binge On. The study is the latest in a string of bad PR T-Mobile has braved since launching the program three months ago. "If more ISPs offer similar programs, these harms will only grow worse," is the damning conclusion. According to a Stanford University study, the contentious perk for certain Un-carrier subscribers is "likely illegal." Citing crucial net neutrality rules, Barbara van Schewick, a net neutrality expert and Stanford law professor who penned the study, accused Binge On of limiting user choice, distorting competition, stifling innovation, and harming free speech. Just a day after announcing the expansion of its Binge On program, T-Mobile may need to consider rolling it back. T-Mobile CEO John Legere now has his own Twitter emoji Video from NBC, Univision, Tidal, and more now part of T-Mobile’s Binge On T-Mobile's Binge On content quadruples as Apple, Disney, and more join fold T-Mobile CEO John Legere can’t stop laughing at Verizon and its Yahoo purchase With Sprint merger done, John Legere steps down as T-Mobile CEO Legere also noted that T-Mobile customers are watching 12 percent more videos, and that a top streaming service saw 66 percent increased viewership after launching with Binge On. Customers can go into their account settings and disable Binge On if they’re unhappy with how it impacts their video quality. T-Mobile’s response didn’t provide much information about how Binge On works, but they continue to claim it’s a good service that’s helping customers, and that it’s optional too. When the phones we all own include 720p, 1080p, and even 2K resolution displays, viewing 480p video on that same screen involves stretching the video across two or three times as many pixels, causing that blurry effect we know all too well. Everything else depends on you and the video provider. All T-Mobile does with Binge On is control the speed of your connection. This is why the EFF reaffirms its belief that T-Mobile is throttling, not optimizing. T-Mobile notes that it does this to all video connections, even those that are not zero-rated websites. This means you’ll experience frame stuttering and buffering issues when playing back video in higher bitrates or from providers who can’t offer a 480p connection. All T-Mobile does is lower the speed of your connection when using Binge On to encourage a lower bitrate. While many streaming services, such as Netflix and YouTube, can offer a lower, DVD quality 480p bitrate, T-Mobile won’t accommodate you if a particular streaming service lacks that option. Legere notes Binge On offers the quality you get from watching a DVD, except most of the content we watch online isn’t DVD quality, and that’s where the EFF has a problem. “Mobile customers don’t want or need full, heavy, giant video data files,” noted Legere in the video, referring to anything higher than the 480p DVD quality a video typically streams in when a customer uses Binge On. Legere went on to claim that those calling Binge On “throttling,” such as the Electronics Frontier Foundation and Google, are companies just trying to make T-Mobile look bad in the ongoing discussion over Net neutrality. ![]()
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