Snippet: EFF Says T-Mobile Is Throttling All Video ☇

Klint Finley for Wired:

But it turns out there may be a big catch: If you use Binge On, T-Mobile slows download and streaming speeds for all video, including streams from services that aren’t covered by the Binge On service, such as YouTube.

That’s the conclusion of a report published today by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The digital advocacy organization tried streaming and downloading videos from sites that are not affiliated with T-Mobile’s Binge On by using a smartphone on T-Mobile’s wireless network and found that their download speeds were significantly slower than they were when downloading and streaming the same content over an encrypted connection, so that T-Mobile couldn’t tell what type of content the testers were accessing. In other words, T-Mobile appears to be deliberately slowing any and all video content on its network.

I switched back to T-Mobile about a month ago and have been very happy with the service and coverage in my area. I appreciate that they’re trying to ways to offer a balance of getting lots of content and low prices, but I think Binge On affecting all video, as the EFF suggested, might be overstepping their bounds. Granted, there is a way to opt-out, but they really ought to stick to only messing with streams from Binge On partners, or at least offer a separate choice in regards to “optimizing” other video.