As an EFF supporter and conflicted T-mobile customer I'm glad he issued this apology. No, it doesn't mean that he and the EFF are on the same page, but at least he is acknowledging that they are an organization to work with rather than dismiss outright.
I'm going to attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt and allow that he may have been unfamiliar with the EFF and had suspected that they represented primarily the interests of T-Mobile's competitors rather than individuals.
Also, I think that while Binge On was announced and promoted in a dishonest way, there is room for people who agree on the importance of net neutrality to disagree on whether such a program has a place on a neutral internet.
I am less inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt because what I see as intentional decietful statements:
> Can you imagine the disappointment, if people saw our TV commercials about Binge On, then went to watch 10 hours of video expecting it to be free, and only THEN learned that they needed to go into their settings to activate this new benefit? That’s how the Carriers would do it, but not T-Mobile. Everyone has it from day 1, period.
> But here’s the thing, and this is one of the reasons that Binge On is a VERY “pro” net neutrality capability -- you can turn it on and off in your MyTMobile account – whenever you want. Turn it on and off at will.
First he claims the they just HAD to opt everyone in because lots of people won't figure how to opt in/out.
Then the claims is it VERY "pro" net neutrality because everyone can easily opt in/out. No wonder he thinks 'right now some people may be confused'.
I'm actually ok with that explanation. He's absolutely right about people not opting in and then complaining after the fact. Don't you remember the dust-up following the auto-enabled iOS "Wi-Fi Assist"? If people can easily opt in and out of the Binge On program AND it's made crystal clear to them how to do so, that's a perfectly reasonable path in my opinion. However, if it requires a notarized letter and 3-month delay to make a change, that's obviously an issue.
Oh, I believe their explanation of why they opted people in by default. I think that very explanation contradicts their claim that Binge On is '"pro" Net Neutrality'.
The majority of people will not know/remember that Binge On exists when they encounter the throttling. This means any any service that wants to offer High Definition video will need to educate each customer on the specific opt-out steps for that customer's Carrier/MVNO and operating system.
What happens when different versions of a crappy MVNO's settings app has the opt-out toggle in a different spot in their menu tree with a different name?
> that's a perfectly reasonable path in my opinion
T-Mobile is a pretty consumer friendly company and I really appreciate what they have done for the US Carrier market. However signaling to other Carriers and MVNOs that these kinds of programs are acceptable takes us towards a path that is very bad for Net Neutrality.
I like him actually - his initial response paired with this strikes me as authentic, that he really did think they were some interest group funded by Verizon or something.
Unfortunate it was the EFF he thought this of, but his defense of binge on seems well reasoned and isn't surrounded in the normal corporate speak that usually comes from the CEO of a big company.
There has always been a risk with being "authentic" although some people can pull it off. One of the things I've noticed about people fairly far up in large organizations is that they have filled their brain with all the various aspects of running that organization and have very little space for things they don't normally interact with. I can completely believe he didn't even know what EFF was beyond "something in the computer space" because it was probably irrelevant information until the twitter bomb.
If you advertise something in a way that makes it appear to be a blatant net neutrality violation (free traffic for Netflix, pay for the rest), then well, people are going to think it's a blatant net neutrality violation.
In practice, BingeOn appears to be a program where you get free traffic if you agree to be throttled to 1.5Mbps. That is not a net neutrality violation at all. That's a perfectly sane product for an ISP to offer. They should have just skipped the Netflix and video rhetoric (and have it apply to all traffic, but that is really of little consequence).
> What Tmobile is doing isn't a challenge to the end.
Yes, it is a direct challenge to the free and open internet. It closes mobile internet towards a specific use (HD video) based on the decision of a third party who does not know if HD video is needed or desired. The high bitrate could be critical to the application in question (for example a medical video consultation, a collaborative image editing tool, or some as-yet un-invented use that may now never happen)
T-mobile could disrupt the mobile carrier market by pushing for open protocols by which the client or server can indicate that lower bitrate videos (or lower resolution images) are acceptable or preferred.
Not to mention the fact that each Carrier/MVNO requiring a startup to implement their specific technical requirements to be eligible for Zero Rating has a direct, negative impact on competition.
imagine you're Google or Netflix, you have auto adapting streaming, so your clients can see a video in real time at 1.5mbps, though low quality. now your competitor had only HD streaming because it is prepared for a market where everyone have 4G so it assumes 2mbps and up. now a isp just decided it's impossible to whatch real time video on that service, which may have been the reason i signed up for internet access in the first place!
> there is room for people who agree on the importance of net neutrality to disagree on whether such a program has a place on a neutral internet.
If you agree that Net Neutrality is important on mobile, then you by definition agree that it is important to not have across the content based throttling or degradation decided by a 'third party' (i.e. not the client or server).
Why does this matter?
If this sort of program becomes standard, the available market for those wishing to offer high definition mobile video will be highly constrained by the increased friction of educating people how to opt-out (not all carriers will make this as easy as T-Mobile). This doesn't have to be Netflix, it could be a remote Doctor using WiFi to stream High Definition video of an ongoing surgery to get an emergency consult from a Specialist via his phone or hotspot.
There are times when "incredibly high resolution rates that are barely detectable by the human eye" are incredibly important and it should not up to T-Mobile to decide when that is. It should be up to the client and/or the server (and it should be done via an open protocol.)
Strangely, even a HUGE supporter of net neutrality, this doesn't bother me very much. Maybe it's because to me, Netflix is SO big, that this looks very similar to a peering agreement.
T-Mobile is just peering with netflix, and because of their agreement, will route data between their networks for free.
Although that is probably the sheep's clothing that the destruction of the open web will come dressed in.
FWIW, I think this has always been the "sticking point". ISPs don't actually want to do quite the horrible things that people are concerned they will one day do (though maybe in some cases they want to come close), but they do want to figure out how to manage the situation of "50% of traffic is coming from Netflix, and Netflix would like to give me some cheaper way of letting all of my customers have access to their product, whether in the form of a cache appliance or a direct network connection to their headquarters; I thereby want to be able to charge people differently for Netflix traffic than for other traffic". It then becomes a philosophical question as to whether you consider this to be a bad thing or not, but this is absolutely the core question: are peering agreements made with content providers who own networks morally in the right? I think the shit actually hits the fan not with companies like Comcast and T-Mobile but with companies like Facebook and Wikimedia: content providers who heavily invest in networks rather than networks who are bound to old content providers.
I think we're muddying the waters here if we equate mobile ISPs with cable ISPs like Comcast.
Comcast would like nothing more than charge people more for using Netflix, because it's causing large load on their last mile connections that they have hopelessly oversubscribed while promising ever higher bandwidth. Netflix will peer and install cache appliances, but they aren't going to dig up the trenches in Kentucky to beef up the cable connections and backbones. As such, everything that will make Netflix perform better on Comcasts network will just lead to more Netflix use and more load on their last mile.
Meanwhile, they can't sell people a Binge-On because who the hell wants to watch Netflix at sub-DVD bitrates at home?
Charging someone more for using Netflix happens automatically if you charge per byte, which is effectively the only viable end game in a world with network neutrality. Networks are only able to provide even sort of "infinite" bandwidth for finite cost due to largely ignoring the principal of network neutrality. (BTW, I watch Netflix over Verizon and AT&T mobile networks quite often and the quality is fine: we must live in very different quality network areas.)
There's a time factor involved as well though. A byte is cheaper to transmit at 7am than at 7pm (less congestion). Business ISP's often charge based on the 95th-percentile bandwidth rate during the billing cycle: http://www.semaphore.com/blog/94-95th-percentile-bandwidth-m...
In return for zero rating the video data for the video providers in the BingeOn program, they agree to serve video with a fixed highest bitrate, which saves on tower spectrum (which is far more important than whatever bandwidth consumption T-Mobile is experiencing at its peering points).
This makes sense. If you're a consumer who doesn't care about the bitrate being limited (assuming the highest bitrate is based on mobile device screen resolution), its not a problem. You get decent video quality on your device, T-Mobile doesn't have to work as hard at network management. If you want to opt out for whatever reason, there is a toggle switch to do so.
Its a clever solution to limited last-mile mobile connectivity.
Why do you keep providing in-accurate descriptions of Binge On and deliberately exclude the throttling that is central to both the current debate and T-mobile's claims of "UP TO 3X MORE VIDEO from your data plan"?
The opted-in throttling is especially dangerous for innovation on the internet because in one swoop it increases the difficulty of starting any service that depends on displaying high definition video on mobile. Not all high definition video is entertainment, so T-mobile has no way of knowing if 'incredibly high resolution rates that are barely detectable by the human eye' are needed or not.
> Its a clever solution to limited last-mile mobile connectivity.
No, it's a slipshod and disingenuous solution to the limited last-mile mobile connectivity that violates Net Neutrality in two different ways: Zero Rating and content specific Throttling.
The value of Net Neutrality is open for debate, but T-Mobile is now flat out lying about their support of it:
> T-Mobile is a company that absolutely supports Net Neutrality and we believe in an open and free Internet.
If T-mobile wanted to solve this problem while respecting Net Neutrality, they could have worked with content networks and other carriers to develop an open standard for marking video stream network data as amendable to throttling.
I just think it would've been refreshing for him to acknowledge that this is also about saving bandwidth and infrastructure build out cost. Rather than this double-talk about pro-consumer mumbo jumbo.
At least that's what I would've expected for straight-talking CEO that portrayed himself out to be.
I called tmobile, told them to turn binge-on off, that net neutrality is super important for small business to be competitive, and that I was offended by what their CEO said about the EFF. I also mentioned that they are normally really good at listening to feedback...
Thanks, t-mo. I will continue to give you money instead of at&t.
That's the right thing to do (to apologize, not to defend Net Neutrality violation of course). Let him go back to making fun of "the dumb and the dumber", instead of attacking EFF ;)
The comments in this thread evidence what a great ploy this was.
First, Outrageous CEO generates a mild uproar, irritating nerds, and generating press. Irritated nerds tweet about T-Mobile, causing it to trend. Bonus: everyone is branded for several minutes by the big pink T in the background of the video.
Second, he issues the apology. TechCrunch article. Twitter. More press for T-Mobile and Binge On. Everyone opines on the matter as if any part of it is meaningful.
Next, he'll meet with the EFF and make a pledge to support them. More chatter, more branding, and now some goodwill to boot.
Net result: Everyone is talking about T-Mobile instead of their competitors.
He admitted "I am a vocal, animated and sometimes foul mouthed CEO" so how can we trust his words about support and shared goals? He can proof something by making significant donation say 1MM to EFF https://www.eff.org/about/contact
if I would be a face on national telecom operator and you non-profit organisation representing interests of significant part of my userbase I would consider this.
I don't think this amount of money makes any difference for t-mobile, but this is a great way to support EFF and help these guys to ensure true online freedom and rights.
While it'd be great for T-Mo to support the mission of organizations like EFF, it wouldn't be good for them to donate $1M (or some other amount) directly right now for a couple of reasons:
- Donating in this situation sounds an awful lot like a shakedown. "Gee, what a nice mobile network you have. Donate $1M and we'll stop calling out your unfair network practices."
- That much corporate money could affect the psychology within EFF as well as people's trust of EFF.
I think he's a great CEO. He has forced AT&T and Verizon to try harder to keep customers, which is good for a lot of people. His direct style doesn't give himself much room to hide behind double-speak and buzzwords.
I don't know if a dominant T-Mobile will be as pro-consumer, but as long as T-Mobile's taking shots at Verizon and being so loud about it, we benefit.
The thing is, what that's basically code for and what he didn't admit is: he's an asshole. When some one tells you they're an asshole (or not-quite tells you) you shouldn't go "well that means they're honest and trustworthy" you should go "well that means they're an asshole".
I'm going to attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt and allow that he may have been unfamiliar with the EFF and had suspected that they represented primarily the interests of T-Mobile's competitors rather than individuals.
Also, I think that while Binge On was announced and promoted in a dishonest way, there is room for people who agree on the importance of net neutrality to disagree on whether such a program has a place on a neutral internet.