T-Mobile: streaming music no longer counts against data cap
t-mobile.com
t-mobile.com
(edit to correct error -- it's not restricted to T-Mobile's own music service. Mea culpa)
(full disclosure: I'm a T-Mobile customer)
Then my immediate next reaction was "NOOOOOOO"
My own reaction was pretty much the same. "Awesome! Wait, awful!"
T-Mobile can't issue a press release about free data, if everybody has unlimited data.
And asking your customers to pay more because you don't have a T-Mobile partnership.
"Letting music be free", as long as it participates in a corporate subsidy, no thanks.
Secondly, I take issue here because I have a strong libre-culture philosophy, and I really strongly believe you should be able to stream, download, remix, or publish everything. This policy by T-Mobile means that any hope of libre content on mobile is getting dimmer. This, combined with the artificial scarcity I mentioned before, make the game feel rigged.
I don't get what you are trying to say here. It certainly costs T-Mobile something to provide additional data, and pretending otherwise isn't an effective argument.
When Google's Chromecast offered 3 free months of Netflix with a purchase was that an attack on net neutrality issue too since it didn't drive equal sign up opportunities to Hulu?
'Honey, we need milk from the store': 10 cents
'Bon Jovi are playing Glastonbury this year!': free
People would have been up in arms about that.
Now, today, yeah, sure, it looks like a Too Good To Be True giveaway. My advice? Look twice.
It's also not available on all of their plans. So now we're basically seeing, "pay more for better access to Spotify etc." Which is not all that far from something like, "Verizon FiOS brought to you by Bing! ($5/month additional charge for access to Google.)"
There is a line between marketing/cross promotions business relationships and encroachment on net neutrality, consumers need to be vigilant, but the line does exist.
I respectfully disagree. Net Neutrality is not simply about carriers charging for" double dipping. It is, at its heart, a free speech issue. It is about certain forms of speech being treated with economic preference. It is about maintaining the low barrier of entry that makes the internet so valuable.
1. http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/18/5822996/t-mobile-music-fre...
What if I'm a musician hacker, and I want to release a album app like Bjork or Jay-Z did?
Do I get free data too?
I don't own a smart phone, I don't stream music. I listen to free or libre music mostly.
I think the entire Net Neutrality is based on a stupid and foolish assumption that we have to stream (or more accurately, download and delete) entertainment.
Based on the FAQ: Yes. Any lawful and licensed streaming music service can work with us for inclusion in this offer
Another comparison, many Australian providers already have a 'freezone'[2] which does not count towards your download limit. This is sometimes paid sponsorship (Australian Football streaming is free on Telstra) and sometimes due to peering agreements or house run servers (many ISPs run their own Steam content servers) which make data through certain channels considerably cheaper for the ISP.
That said, from a consumer perspective, I would be stoked if my telco said that I could have free music streaming at no extra cost, though. It might just be a positive customer benefit, or it may be something more sinister - who knows.
[1] http://i.imgur.com/UguEpIm.jpg [2] http://freezone.iinet.net.au/
Step 2) Report monthly bandwidth usage by bit color
Step 3) Bill monthly by colored segments
Step 4) Ratchet up the price of bandwidth by increasing the charges related to one colored bit bucket while periodically offering discounts on other colored bit buckets to maintain market share and drive marketing messages.
Not the typical 3 steps to profit, but close -- and without a hand-wavy step 2. If this works, expect the rest of the industry to follow shortly.
The state of the US carrier system has messed itself up so badly that a carrier trying to offer something for FREE is now being attacked by the customers it's trying to serve.
What a joke
For example, it's common for carriers to charge extra for tethering. That is to say, they want more money to transmit bytes to and from your phone if your phone is forwarding for your laptop than if your phone is using that data itself. Even though their costs are identical and they actually have to go through contortions to catch people doing this using the more clever schemes for it, they still insist on charging more.
We want dumb pipes that deliver data and care not for what kind of data it is. Any step away from that is bad. That's what this represents, and "free" doesn't make up for that.
You talk about free data to Facebook as if it's a universally good thing. Imagine if someone is making the next great Facebook competitor. Now, instead of a level playing field, they'll have to contend with the fact that people get to access Facebook for "free" while they use up their data quota talking to the new service.
Any time someone gives you something for "free", look around to see if you can spot the sucker. It might be you.
It's a great move for consumers right now who stream music. However it is encouraging a tighter coupling between content producers and service providers - which dismantles the neutrality of the Internet. In the long run, consumers are said to loose out because only the biggest businesses will be able to afford to maintain their tight coupling. Smaller players will lose out.
HYPOTHETICAL:
You have internet through an ISP that charges for data. I am a provider of paid content (movies, music, ebooks...whatever) and you are a customer of mine. Your ISP provides detailed billing that breaks down your bill by IP address.
I allow you to send me a copy of your ISP bill each month, and I figure out from the detail billing break down how much of your data costs were due to downloading or streaming content you purchased from me. I reimburse you for that.
QUESTIONS:
1. Is there a net neutrality violation here?
2. If you say that there is, can anything be done to stop it?
3. If there is NOT a violation of net neutrality here...does that change if the ISP makes it easier for me to pay part of your bill? For instance, suppose the ISP offers to save me the hassle of getting and reading a copy of your bill and instead they track your usage of my data and they bill me, and deduct those costs from you bill?
(The situation in #3 is essentially, I believe, what AT&T called "Sponsored Data", and was pretty widely frowned upon by net neutrality advocates).
4. If you say that the original hypothetical was OK, but the ISP getting involved as described in question 3 is not, what is it about ISP involvement that makes a difference? I am assuming that the ISP offers the "pay for your customers' data" service to anyone, for any kind of data.
Is it illegal for me to pay you a commission to sell products for me?
Is it illegal for you to subcontract selling these products?
Is it illegal for the subcontractors to subcontract?
Is it illegal for me to give a signing bonus if you recruit your friends to work for me?
Is it illegal for you to get a bonus based on your direct and indirect contribution to how well the company is doing?
Of course none of these are illegal on their face but if you add them all up into a pyramid scheme you can bet that it's objectionable to many and that in many countries it's illegal.
It's a shade of gray. Many people here believe that the importance of keeping the net neutral is huge (even while giving a wink and a nod to QOS and other realistic compromises). You can even tell by the mixed reactions throughout the comment thread that people believe this to be a very slippery slope, they want this but are worried about even precedents like this one. As your comment highlighted net neutrality can be nebulous so when you push a boundry it is quite possible that there is very little to stop you continuing to push.
Having said that I don't necessarily disagree with your reasoning, it's one of the reasons I support Aero being legal. Possibly a little hypocritically.
Q: Will you add more streaming providers over time?
A: Absolutely! And we want to hear from you! Who do you think we should add next? Vote at #MusicFreedom and be heard!
Q: Can any streaming services ask to become part of Music Freedom?
A: Yes. Any lawful and licensed streaming music service can work with us for inclusion in this offer, which is designed to benefit all of our Simple Choice customers. Click here, send us an email and we’ll get back to you to begin the process.
To be fair, it's unclear how you'd actually implement this.
Would you suggest a special bit on the TCP packet saying "this is for music streaming" (cf RFC 3514)?
Or, more seriously, would T-Mobile have some form where anybody could enter a Bro filter to identify traffic coming from "their" "music streaming" service? Setting aside the fact that writing and running an arbitrary number of arbitrarily-complex DPI filters is hard, how would T-Mobile filter out people abusing the system ("my music streaming service also lets you stream one of ten songs, or you can torrent; the traffic is designed to be indistinguishable") without appearing to be biased towards big incumbents?
This is analogous to the fact that Amazon, WalMart et al can negotiate better shipping rates with Fedex, USPS et al, and can in turn offer free or cheap shipping to the end user.
This is also cheap for T-Mobile. Streaming music is not a zero impact on bandwidth, but (say) a 256K stream is small on (say) a 5mb/s connection. And like most consumer bandwidth, it assumes that most people won’t use it, most of the time.
> Licensed music streaming from included services does not count toward Simple Choice high speed data allotment on T-Mobile’s network; song downloads, video content, and non-audio content excluded.
The plans already include unlimited data. They say "no overages. Ever."
They do have one limit, which is 1GB on LTE (per month, I assume). After that, your speeds are reduced to 3G.
What makes this hard to understand is that 3G is perfectly adequate for music streaming. You really only need about 100kbps to stream high-quality music, and even half-assed 3G is adequate for that. Hell, I've managed to stream music over EDGE before, with the only problem being the injection of lots of annoying GSM buzz into my stereo system.
So I guess what it comes down to is, they're making it so that a certain class of slow-and-steady LTE usage, which doesn't need anything close to LTE speeds, will no longer affect your ability to get LTE speeds when you actually need it. Or something like that. Which is nice, but nowhere near the big deal they make it out to be.
Previously, on months where I drove more often, I hit the cap. This means I'll not have to care about keeping an eye on my usage.
You're correct about the actual change they made: letting me do something that's comparatively low-bandwidth without it counting against my high-bandwidth concerns. But for me at least, you've underestimated the benefit: I'm unlikely to need to look at my usage again or do math to decide if it's time to stop streaming. I'll just rock on.