T-Mobile’s Legere issues stern response to claims of video throttling

[Jeff Causey]

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T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere has not been one to shy away from the limelight and mixing in a little bit of controversy only makes him more animated. In a new video posted by Legere, the head of T-Mobile sternly responds to claims by a variety of parties that the carrier is throttling video speeds for customers who sign up for the Binge On option. Legere says he just could not bite his tongue any longer as it appears some of the parties are trying to confuse consumers.

According to Legere, the parties complaining about throttling, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Google, are playing a game of semantics that amounts to “bullshit” to use his term. Legere explains that Binge On does two things, neither of which amount to throttling speeds to only 1.5 Mbps as alleged by Google and the EFF. First, T-Mobile determines whether data being accessed is video from a Binge On partner and if so, that data will not count against a user’s data plan.

T-Mobile also “optimizes” the video stream so that it will be more appropriate for the smaller screen of a mobile device and so it will not use as much data according to Legere. One issue though is that T-Mobile appears to be applying this “optimization” to all video streams whether they are part of the Binge On program or not. This conclusion can be reached as Legere himself says the optimization helps users “stretch data usage” which would only be an issue for non-Binge On videos.

In testing done by the EFF, that group says the only optimization being done is to limit the speed to 1.5 Mbps. Both Google and the EFF have indicated that the throttling or other steps taken by T-Mobile may be a good thing for some consumers, but that the choice should be up to the individual consumers rather than concealing what is happening in fine print as alleged by the EFF.

Legere thinks these groups who are complaining have some other goal in mind in trying to characterize Binge On and T-Mobile’s actions as a bad thing. As the issue plays out, the FCC has asked T-Mobile, along with Comcast and AT&T, to provide information about their delivery of video and how it helps increase competition without running afoul of net neutrality requirements.

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Click here to view the embedded video.


source: T-Mobile
via: Re/code


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