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It seems that the right to self-determination does not extend to alcohol or mobile video.
Who decides what’s good for us is a contentious topic at the best of times, but it is a particularly sensitive subject for those of us returning to work after another indulgent Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Judging by the quantities of food and drink I consumed during my holiday, I am clearly not moderation personified; however, I’ll defend to the last my right to self-determination, and if I’m determined to have a few beers then binge on cake during the festive season, then that’s what I’ll do.
I’m fairly confident I’m not alone in this, judging by the reaction to the U.K.’s updated guidelines on alcohol consumption. As soon as they were issued on Friday, the government was accused of being a nanny state, the fun police, and so on.
Even in matters not pertaining to alcohol, people don’t like being told what’s good for them, which partly explains the backlash currently being directed at T-Mobile US over Binge On.
Binge On lets mobile customers watch as much video as they like, at no extra cost, and without it counting against their data allowance, provided the video service they access is a partner of T-Mobile’s.
Sounds great, but there are one or two catches that have not gone down well at all.
T-Mobile reduces the quality of all video accessed by Binge On users, regardless of whether or not the video service provider is a Binge On partner. T-Mobile uses the word ‘optimising’ to describe this process, which is a bit like a duck hunter saying they are optimising the duck population.
T-Mobile argues that it enables customers to get more from their data allowance. However, it has been accused – most prominently by YouTube, which is not a Binge On partner – of throttling traffic.
"That’s a game of semantics, and it’s bullshit," said T-Mobile’s typically understated CEO John Legere, in a video – a YouTube video, incidentally – posted on the company’s Website on Thursday.
"That’s not what we’re doing, really. What throttling is, is slowing down data and removing customer control. Let me be clear: Binge On is neither of those things," he insisted.
Really? It’s just that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) begs to differ.
The consumer lobby group put T-Mobile’s Binge On ‘optimisation’ to the test. It uploaded a video to one of the EFF’s servers and measured the connection speed when trying to access it via a T-Mobile LTE connection, both with Binge On enabled and Binge On disabled. With Binge On switched off, the connection speed was around 5 Mbps. With Binge On enabled, the connection speed was around 1.5 Mbps.
For comparative purposes, the EFF conducted the same test but downloaded a non-video file. Suddenly, the Binge On connection speed jumped to more than 4 Mbps, while the non-Binge On connection held steady at 5 Mbps.
"T-Mobile’s ‘optimisation’ consists entirely of throttling the video stream’s throughput down to 1.5 Mbps," the EFF said in a statement on Monday.
The EFF claimed that T-Mobile throttles the bandwidth and it is up to the video service provider to make sure it is using adaptive bitrate, which automatically adjusts video quality according to the available bandwidth, in order to ensure the customer can still get a good experience.
"Given the difference between what T-Mobile implies they do and what we found, we contacted them to get clarification," the EFF said. "They confirmed that they don’t do any actual optimisation of video streams other than reducing the bandwidth allocated to them (and relying on the provider to notice, and adapt the bitrate accordingly)."
If that’s not throttling, I’m not sure what is.
Furthermore, Binge On is also an opt-out service, rather than opt-in, so T-Mobile – a company trying to forge a reputation for empowering customers – assumes its subscribers will be thrilled to let their operator decide what’s best for them.
"If T-Mobile were to be clear with its customers that enabling Binge On meant all of their video would be throttled, and then ask them whether or not they wanted to opt in, then they could obtain meaningful customer consent," the EFF said.
Legere on Thursday had some predictably strong words for Binge On’s critics.
With Binge On, "we’re giving you more video, more for free and a powerful new choice on how you want your video delivered," he insisted. "What’s not to love? We give customers more choices and these jerks are complaining? Who the Hell do they think they are? What gives them the right to dictate what my customers or any wireless consumer can choose for themselves?"
However, much like the U.K. government’s alcohol guidelines, people always react strongly when they feel they are being dictated to, even when it would probably be in their best interest to comply.
And with that, I’m off to the pub.
