T-Mobile’s now controversial Binge On service was announced last year, it allows subscribers to stretch their mobile data further by locking video streams from supported quality to DVD quality or higher. The carrier has been accused of throttling services that don’t support Binge On and it has fought back on those accusations by saying that it optimizes and doesn’t throttle. While its CEO sticks to the optimizing story a spokesperson for the carrier has confirmed that Binge On throttles unsupported services.
An unnamed T-Mobile spokesperson confirmed to Wired that customers who have activated Binge On will experience downgraded speeds when streaming video from services that haven’t signed up for Binge On, those services include the world’s largest video streaming website, YouTube.
Until the customer deactivates Binge On they are also going to get slower speeds when trying to download videos for offline viewing from websites that don’t support Binge On. That’s textbook throttling even if the CEO argues otherwise.
T-Mobile activates Binge On by default for all of its subscribers and they have to deactivate it manually, which can be done at any time. It does allow subscribers to watch unlimited video from major services like Hulu and Netflix, and limits quality to 480p on other services, however all other unsupported services get throttled.
CEO John Legere is yet to change his position on this entire debacle, he actually finds himself in hot water now due to some comments he recently made after the company was yet again called out for throttling unsupported services, it appears that Binge On has eradicated any good will that his straight shooting style may have generated with customers.