Posts Tagged: Binge
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T-Mobile announces expansion of Music Freedom and Binge On
T-Mobile is expanding their Music Freedom and Binge On products with new services and in the process, T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere has some pointed words for the competition. Music Freedom and Binge On are T-Mobile’s solutions for streaming music and video, respectively, that does not count against a user’s data limits. With the addition of new content providers today, T-Mobile now has over 100 services that are streaming across their wireless network without counting against user’s data.
Even though T-Mobile may not be counting music and video streaming over these services against user plans, they still track the traffic. According to T-Mobile and Legere, customers have streamed 90 billion songs, over 190 million hours of video, and a combined 350 petabytes of high-speed data thanks to Music Freedom and Binge On.
On the Music Freedom service, T-Mobile is adding Amazon Music, Chilltrax, ESPN Radio, OHIO.FM, PreDanz and Uforia to the list of eligible services. This brings the total number of services over 40 and according to T-Mobile, covers 96% of all music streamed over the network. Binge On gets several new additions including Dailymotion, EPIS, OVGuide, OWNZONES, Viki, YipTV, 120 Sports, Nickelodeon, Spike TV and TV Land, bringing the total number of video services to over 60 covering more than 70% of video traffic on the T-Mobile network.
Legere, in a video released in conjunction with this announcement, also addressed competitors like Verizon and AT&T. In particular, he spoke about data that gets carried over from month to month if unused. Legere points out that T-Mobile gives users a year to make use of that data while the competition only provides one or two months before recovering the available data from customer accounts. Legere also addresses some of the controversy regarding video stream quality and claims in his comments that users are wasting bandwidth on high definition data on small screens, a claim he thinks is supported by news about Netflix downgrading video streams to only 360p.
Check out Legere’s comments in the video below and then hit the source link if you want additional details about these Uncarrier changes.
source: T-Mobile
Come comment on this article: T-Mobile announces expansion of Music Freedom and Binge On
T-Mobile’s Binge On “optimizations” are throttling all video streams to 1.5Mbps
When T-Mobile announced their Binge On promotion for video streaming, they didn’t quite mention how video streams would be “optimized” on their network. This created some frustration between T-Mobile and YouTube, and rightfully so, since YouTube isn’t even part of the Binge On program. To clarify some things, the Electronic Frontier Foundation ran some tests to see how video was being throttled/optimized and came to some interesting conclusions.
Regardless of whether or not a video stream is counting against your data cap, if a customer has opted into Binge On, video streams are capped at 1.5Mbps. Opting out of Binge On completely removes that optimization, and the EFF saw video streams reaching 5Mbps, which is a pretty big jump. Oddly enough, those speeds were also capped for video downloads, which means T-Mobile is actually paying attention to the types of files that are being downloaded on their network and adjusting speeds accordingly.
Whether your want to call this optimization or throttling, it’s still a major pain point when the network and phones should be capable of delivering 1080p video streams without a hitch. This network optimization is happening regardless of whether or not the network is congested at the time, which is another sticky catch to the unlimited video streaming.
It makes sense that T-Mobile would have to do something to avoid blowing up their network with tons of customers streaming video, but it’s unfortunate that this kind of thing isn’t completely apparent up front.
If you’re interested in the full testing methodology, you can find the results at the links below.
source: EFF
via: Ars Technica
Come comment on this article: T-Mobile’s Binge On “optimizations” are throttling all video streams to 1.5Mbps
YouTube unhappy with T-Mobile’s Binge On program, accuses carrier of throttling video
YouTube has accused T-Mobile of throttling all video traffic on its new Binge On program, which waivers data usage in exchange for lower-quality video. YouTube is currently the only major video provider unaffiliated with the program.
The post YouTube unhappy with T-Mobile's Binge On program, accuses carrier of throttling video appeared first on Digital Trends.
Binge watch pretty Little Liars, Sense 8, and more with our 5 shows to stream this week
How are you going to get through this week? By pulling up your favorite streaming service and queueing the finest films and TV shows available now. Up this week: Sense8, Sid and Nancy, and more.
The post Binge watch pretty Little Liars, Sense 8, and more with our 5 shows to stream this week appeared first on Digital Trends.