T-Mobile has been a massive influence to the wireless industry over the last few years as they have introduced plenty of changes to their own network which has caused other major carriers like Verizon, AT&T and now finally Sprint, to make similar changes, like getting rid of two-year contracts. T-Mobile’s latest industry shake-up was the introduction of the BingeOn service, which basically lets subscribers stream video without touching their data limits similar to the way T-Mobile allows streaming Music without eating away at data with their music freedom feature. Only, BingeON hasn’t been met with as much positive energy as Music Freedom simply because if the way that it works.
What it comes down to is that users can stream unlimited amounts of video without touching their data, but the streaming quality of the video is dumped down to 480p. What’s more, is that there have now been a number of complaints about T-Mobile’s BingeOn service throttling users even if the video service they were watching videos through wasn’t a BingeOn partner, like with YouTube for example. Yes, customers do have the option to disable BingeOn if they want to, but this hasn’t solved the issue for everyone.This caused a small uproar from YouTube
This caused a small uproar from YouTube which led to questions from the EFF on Twitter, to which John Legere (T-Mobile’s CEO) was more than happy to respond to with a short but sweet video that explains in part the EFF’s question, as well as asking them a question in a slightly more heated manner. The back and forth between Legere and the EFF ended up causing one of the BingeOn partners to pull out of the program, a service called 4stream.tv, stating that they have decided to halt their participation following the response from Legere and the aftermath of that conversation. With 4stream being a much smaller partner there’s no telling how it will end up affecting T-Mobile’s BingeOn efforts moving forward, but it certainly does add to the negative attention surrounding the BingeOn service that was already there due to the issue of throttling users.