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.
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?
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.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t-mobiles...
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.
https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/issues-insights-blog/open-lett...
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.
Whatabouts a flag to indicate that throttling will gracefully degrade? QoS tool's best friend?
At least that's what I would've expected for straight-talking CEO that portrayed himself out to be.
This isn't news.
This isn't interesting.
This isn't thought-provoking.
It's just drama.
We're not in high school anymore. We can cut the drama, really, without any negative consequences.