T-Mobile US boss John Legere calls bulls*** on video throttling claims T-Mobile US CEO John Legere has called BS – literally – on claims that his company's video service is throttling streaming speeds and hence quality. In a video set in what looks like his basement and sporting a pink-streaked tracksuit, Legere said in response to criticism from YouTube: "There are people out there saying we're …
I got in on a deal when they were offering two lines of "Unlimited" LTE (buddied up) for a decent amount of money. So far I haven't really tested the waters, though I do occasionally stream video and do some downloading.
But what really needs to be done is for the FCC to come down on any and all "unlimited" advertising as infeasible in a world of physically-limited bandwidth, be it wired or wireless. Now, "unmetered" is a feasible target, but it must be held to that: absolutely no metering whatsoever, making this impractical for wireless.
As for the YouTube beef, it does sound like a legitimate beef to me. After all, wasn't sweetheart deals (and the favoritism they entail) one of the reasons for the Net Neutrality push in the first place?
> Sadly, in the UK the Advertising Standards Authority has decided that it's ok because everyone lies about 'unlimited'.
That "everyone else is doing it" excuse is so annoying. I recently raised a really minor bug* on our site to change "login" to "log in" where it's being used as a verb, but it was rejected because, to paraphrase, "everyone misuses it like that, so customers are used to it."
* Before someone insults me, this was raised along with other more major ones during a deployment-freeze bug blitz.
Before someone insults me ...
Not at all. Gets up my nose, too. Phrasal verbs need to be verb + space + preposition, not these franken-verbs. I will not "setup" your computer or tell you how to "login" (or any of numerous other abominations that "computer" folk seem to think are OK).
They need to build NINE times as many masts to support the same number of people on 1080p as 480p
HD video needs cable or fibre, or else Mobile needs to be x5 more expensive to support a higher density of basestations = smaller cells = more capacity = more speed.
So it's about profits.
@Mage: I realize there are people who read here who make a living understanding these things, so I am treading dangerously here, since I am about as far from a wireless networking guru as the come. However!
Although the actual standards and implementations of LTE vary wildly, it is reasonable to expect ~5mpbs from service in that guise, where an appropriate signal strength is obtained. Combining this with a rough average of the encoding systems used for 1080p coming to about 5mpbs, we've got a platform to deliver 1080p to the typical LTE subscriber who is in reasonable proximity to a tower.
So! We do not need more towers, I don't think. However, you might want to wiki "backhaul" and also look at how much litteral radio bandwidth (how many megahertz) is licensed to the various mobile providers. I think there you will see that T-Mobile somewhat has their back up against a wall.
I believe these two issues are more present in the minds of the network engineers at T-Mobile than tower at this point in the evolution of wireless networking in the US.
T-mobile throttle the bandwidth themselves. That is why you get buffering on the Hi Res video from YouTube when you start to play them and makes the experience a mess.
You connect at full bandwidth to YouTube and start getting a 1080p res video for instance. T-Mobile then decides to optimise this video and it does this using YouTube's bandwidth sensing system by throttling the link down to the level which forces Youtube to downgrade your video to 480p.
However during this process there is a time where Youtube is sending at 1080p and T-Mobile has throttled the bandwidth right down. Youtube keeps buffering as it thinks it is a blip (you started on a high bandwidth connection) and keeps trying before deciding that your pipe can't support it and so reduces the quality. It's a bad user experience.
This happens for everyone despite Youtube not being a partner and you possibly having unmetered bandwidth if you have' binge on' turned on.
Aside from the more academic concerns about network neutrality, my big problem as a consumer (I am a T-Mobile customer, though I don't think I get that "service" with my pre-paid plan), is that they turned it on by default and failed to explain to customers exactly what it would do, especially the fact that it can apparently cause poor playback (not just lower resolution) on sites like YouTube.
Hidden among all the misdirection and fluff, it appears that they're trying to flog a low bandwidth "partner" business model for their subscribers not on high bandwidth packages.
There's very clearly some lack of transparency about what they're doing, but it would seem that people who want full fat bandwidth can purchase that option also. Though I'm sure it costs a bit more.
Sounds like the perfect ingredients for a good old-fashioned mud-slinging contest. A bit like American elections.
They say you can turn off "binge on" but I haven't tried. Personally, Mr legere is probably a big a*hole, but he has been shaking up things and it has seemed to be benefiting competition overall.
I actually like the idea of limiting everyone to 480p video, I hate the idea of me or others burning through the shared bandwidth with 1080p video on a tiny smartphone. Previously I'd usually have to start a video, go into settings and change it to something lower. (this is for youtube, which currently still isn't part of binge on but they gave me unlimited data anyway, for another year at least). Its not like we are talking home broadband service here. There's probably only so many towers they can put up, mobes they can service in a given area.
When he says "not throttling" he seems to mean in the sense of the usual throttle to 100Kb when you've used up your high speed data quota.
So...
While I was in the UK, as a Yank, the only way I could get internet was via a hotspot. (No UK bank, no home service to my corporate apartment.) Since my apartment was close to the train station, after every major football match, the locals would come home and as they get off the train, they over loaded the local phone service. So EE throttled the service down to 2G because the number of phones in the area jumped and overwhelmed the service. (Hopefully they honored their stated plans and upgraded the service to LTE over 4G. )
The point is that for everyone the quality of service dropped to a point where you couldn't do more than text or voice calls.
Lets face it, you're being throttled automatically because the service couldn't keep up and dropped. Do you call this throttling as in Some Exec is looking to reduce the amount of data you can stream at any time or a system failing over to a lower grade service before crapping out?
Yes, you're being throttled in both cases, but in the second case, its not a corporate decision, but a system survival technique. Same term, different meanings.
I think T-Mobile won a lawsuit over this with AIO, in favour of T-Mobile. It was decided the colour was magenta. But I don't care.
What T-Mobile does is a mix of transcoding of video format, from older standards into newer more optimised standards, as well as link bandwidth sensing. In that way a video can be streamed using the full bandwidth available without hickups in the stream, by constantly adjusting the stream bandwidth (quality, that is). Advertising you have LTE at 40Mbps, doesn't mean you actually will have that bandwidth available to you, so the quality goes down to make it fit into what you have.
If you are downloading something in the background, as well as streaming a video, one of the two will be squeezed to fit the total bandwidth as well.
Is that a good thing? Well, if you want the video in full HD, then download it (legal or illegal) and play it from local storage.
Throttling to me means that they squeeze the video to a set bandwidth, lower than the available bandwidth you have at that time. That's something easy to test for though, and any claim of them doing just that would need proof.
I'm not a T-Mobile defender, employee, stockholder, or in any way associated with them, but is there any actual proof of throttling?
That is exactly what they do, see my post above.
"You connect at full bandwidth to YouTube and start getting a 1080p res video for instance. T-Mobile then decides to optimise this video and it does this using YouTube's bandwidth sensing system by throttling the link down to the level which forces Youtube to downgrade your video to 480p."
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
