January 2016

The Electronic Frontier Foundation decided to test T-Mobile's Binge On Optimization by posting a video on one of tour servers and tried accessing it via a T-Mobile LTE connection using various methods and under various conditions.

The first result of our test confirms that when Binge On is enabled, T-Mobile throttles all HTML5 video streams to around 1.5Mps, even when the phone is capable of downloading at higher speeds, and regardless of whether or not the video provider enrolled in Binge On. This is the case whether the video is being streamed or being downloaded—which means that T-Mobile is artificially reducing the download speeds of customers with Binge On enabled, even if they’re downloading the video to watch later. The second major finding in our tests is that T-Mobile is throttling video downloads even when the filename and HTTP headers (specifically the Content-Type) indicate the file is not a video file. We asked T-Mobile if this means they are looking deeper than TCP and HTTP headers, and identifying video streams by inspecting the content of their customers’ communications, and they told us that they have solutions to detect video-specific protocols/patterns that do not involve the examination of actual content. Our last finding is that T-Mobile’s video “optimization” doesn’t actually alter or enhance the video stream for delivery to a mobile device over a mobile network in any way. This means T-Mobile’s “optimization” consists entirely of throttling the video stream’s throughput down to 1.5Mbps. If the video is more than 480p and the server sending the video doesn’t have a way to reduce or adapt the bitrate of the video as it’s being streamed, the result is stuttering and uneven streaming—exactly the opposite of the experience T-Mobile claims their “optimization” will have. In other words, our results show that T-Mobile is throttling video streams, plain and simple.

[Commentary] Over the last few months, I have been speaking with and visiting digital inclusion organizations across the United States to better understand local efforts to address the digital divide. Digital inclusion is a national priority in the United States. High-speed Internet access is widely recognized as a necessity for full participation in today’s society. Employers, educators, businesses, healthcare providers, and civic institutions expect people to have access to computers and broadband connectivity. However, accessible, reliable, and affordable broadband service continues to be out of reach for millions of Americans, many of whom live in low-income households. This gap in adoption of high-speed Internet and the lack of skills needed to use broadband-enabled tools in meaningful ways continue to be significant problems that policymakers, researchers, and practitioners have all focused their attention on for over a decade. In my conversations with and observations of eight digital inclusion organizations, I’ve identified four essential activities that are necessary to help low-income individuals and families adopt broadband in ways that are most appropriate to their personal needs and contexts: 1) Providing low-cost broadband, 2) Connecting digital literacy training with relevant content and services, 3) Making low-cost computers available, and 4) Operating public access computing centers.
[Dr. Colin Rhinesmith is a Benton Faculty Research Fellow. He is also an Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Oklahoma.]

The nation’s four largest wireless service providers – AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon—had a combined market share of 98.5% as of year-end 2014, leaving all other wireless providers combined with only 1.5% of the market, according to a report released in late December by the Federal Communications Commission. In comparison, the top four providers controlled only about two-thirds of the market in 2003.

As broadband providers continue to expand and upgrade their networks throughout West Virginia, some Internet customers in the state are finding barriers to their existing service.

In recent months, some customers with Suddenlink in West Virginia — and other companies nationwide — have run into new policies, known as data allowances or data caps, that limit the number of emails, photos, songs and videos they can download in a given month. The policies also limit customers’ streaming capabilities from on-demand Internet media streaming services like Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime. “We have introduced data plans in virtually all markets and are in the process of rolling them out to the remaining few,” said Pete Abel, a spokesman for Suddenlink, one of the biggest cable and broadband providers in the country. Abel said the data plans, which limit the number of gigabytes a customer can download without being charged an additional fee, are meant to improve Suddenlink’s system and ensure that customers who use their Internet service less are not negatively affected by customers who use more than their allotted amount of data.