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Comment by kin | Hacker News Reader

John Legere firmly believes that he fights for the user (consumer). So, when the EFF comes in and accuses T-Mobile of throttling video data, he's going to lash back and ask:

1.Who the f*ck are you anyway EFF? He's the CEO of T-Mobile. Of course he knows who they are. But he's asking now because to him they are acting out of character. EFF is supposed to be on the same side, the consumer side.

2. Why are you stirring up so much trouble? Because if EFF is on the same side, they'd inform T-Mobile more quietly that they're actually throttling data. Personally, I really do believe the throttling here is not intended behavior of Binge On. I honestly do.

3. Who pays you? Why are they attacking T-Mobile? Are they being paid to? If they fought for the consumers, why would they attack such a consumer friendly company such as T-Mobile?

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That is just... stupid. Calling out a major corporation for deceptive practices is "stirring up trouble"? A non-profit organization is supposed to be "on the same side" as some company you arbitrarily annoint as the holy one? Someone who "knows who they are" seriously believes they are "being paid" to do what they always do, shine a light on troubling events in the digital world?

Are you a t-mobile employee?

Legere has a bit of a personality cult thing going on here. A lot of people will just swallow his bs hook, line, and sinker without really thinking it through.

And today he was talking trash about EFF, getting his ditto-heads fired up to be 'anti EFF'.

I'm not a T-Mobile employee. I'm a T-Mobile customer, and as a customer I would hate to see them go down for something that I don't think to be a big deal. EFF could have easily told T-Mobile diplomatically that they're misinforming consumers instead of feeding the story to media outlets.

A user-friendly "Binge On" implementation can be done. You don't need to force plaintext or throttle anything. You just watch traffic at the L3 level, and if it's one of the IP addresses of Spotify or Netflix or whoever, don't record that traffic in your data usage accounting system.

You want Netflix to go faster? Work with them to add a bunch of cache servers with the couple hundred most popular movies, and have your DNS servers point to those. If you want to only do this for 480i video, have Netflix add a small setting that only shows up when you're running on a phone on the T-Mobile network.

No need to artificially slow other video down. You get to make the same marketing claims, except they're true now. You still get to be the "free data for all my video" carrier. Netflix might get a few new users (because mobile is making it feasible for normal people to avoid having computers or land-line internet connections again). Everyone wins.

Cache servers don't help reduce bandwidth at the tower.

The way to properly implement this is for Netflix to cache popular content on your phone encrypted, updated when you're on wifi. That's not going to happen.

TL;DR RF spectrum is a scarce.

>John Legere firmly believes that he fights for the user (consumer)

That seems... unlikely.

Further saying "he's going to lash back and ask" implies that was the only and inevitable response, as opposed to say: just having the PR department draft a response carefully defining what exactly BingeOn does/doesn't while trying it's damnedest to pretend it's just issuing this release because T-Mobile felt like it and not at all because a consumer advocacy group called them a bunch of shitheels... you know how companies usually respond.

> John Legere firmly believes that he fights for the user

I wish you were being sarcastic. John is, at heart, a salesman - a mild con artist. He is putting on an act. all he cares about is making more money for tmobile - everything else is an act.

> But he's asking now because to him they are acting out of character

EFF is exactly acting in character. So is Legere - as someone whose job it is to manipulate people into seeing tmobiles aggressive business tactics in the most positive light possible.

Legere is attacking EFF in this way because he knows that most people are very responsive to this kind of emotionalism - he is hoping to discredit EFF in the eyes of his loyal tmobile-loving social-network keyboard warriors.

> they'd inform T-Mobile more quietly

tmobile KNOWS they are throttling data! Or limiting bandwidth. Everyone involved already knows this! Legere only squabbles over semantics, otherwise he is bragging about this throttling.

> Are they being paid to? If they fought for the consumers, why would they attack such a consumer friendly company such as T-Mobile?

That is exactly the kind of nonsense which Legere is hoping people will think.

"if EFF is on the same side, they'd inform T-Mobile more quietly that they're actually throttling data"

T-Mobile knows it's throttling data.

All the EFF did was tell everyone else the results of testing. John's basically saying "who the fuck are you for telling everyone".

Whether or not it's true that the data throttling is unintentional, by being publicly hostile to the EFF, he's losing customer goodwill that's one of the biggest things T-Mobile has going for them.

The problem is that while the tech-savvy are familiar with the EFF, the general public may not be as much. If he manages to turn the general public against the EFF, then consumers would lose one of their most outspoken advocates.

^^ This...

... seems to be happening, at least today on twitter, and I think its worth worrying about. Bloggers and journalists seem to have a better grasp of the issues, so maybe it'll backfire against Legere.

> so maybe it'll backfire against Legere.

Probably not. Best case, EFF comes out unscathed. Worst case is they have less goodwill then before.

There is no way this works out poorly for T-Mobile, only the EFF.

> Personally, I really do believe the throttling here is not intended behavior of Binge On. I honestly do.

Could you elaborate on this? I wasn't aware about Binge On before, but going just off this incident it appeared to me like deceptive behavior on T-Mobile's part. I feel like I don't have enough information to make a fair judgement though.

The throttling (or downgraded bandwidth) in question is intrinsic to the very purpose of bingeon. Tmobile sends you lower quality videos, but they don't count against your data use.

But they did this to everyone, making it an opt out rather than an opt in.

And they are throttling (downgrading bandwidth) videos of sites that did not ask to be a part of this program.

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