EFF proves T-Mobile is throttling YouTube

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. And while some customers may appreciate the new perk of choosing T-Mobile, the EFF is decidedly unhappy with the whole thing.

T-Mobile touts Binge On as a way for mobile customers to use certain video streaming services without that traffic counting against a customer's data cap.

Following this, T-Mobile noted in a statement that it wasn't throttling YouTube, nor was it throttling any other video streaming site unjustly. And as I mentioned before, if the provider doesn't adapt, the user sees stuttered video. "Our tests show that video streams are capped at around 1.5Mbps, even when the LTE connection and the rest of T-Mobile's network can support higher throughput between the customer and the server", the EFF wrote in a blog post.

Binge On is raising net neutrality concerns - the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules call for no throttling or preferential treatment of traffic. The results? According to the EFF, all HTML5 video streams on T-Mobile are throttled to 1.5Mbps speed even if the content provider is not signed up with Binge On, and the phone can stream at faster speeds. And if a video is more than 480p and the server involved in streaming it can not make adjustments on the fly to lower the speed, T-Mobile customers are stuck with stuttering video that doesn't result in a pleasant viewing experience. The tests included streaming an HTML5 video on a web page, downloading a video to an SD card, downloading a video with a file name that didn't indicate that it was a video, and downloading a large file that wasn't a video.

You can read through the entire article now, but the bottom line is this: T-Mobile's Binge On service is throttling all video to 1.5 megabytes per second, regardless of where the video itself has come from. According to the EFF, if a you try to access a site that doesn't automatically downgrade the quality of a video to match the user's connection speed, you're still stuck trying to stream that video over a slow connection, leading to choppy video performance as long as Binge On is activitated on your account.

The EFF said they reached out to T-Mobile to better understand the process. So what should YouTube say instead?

The EFF also found that T-Mo is slowing the connection of downloads that aren't obviously video. For one, YouTube complained that the company is downgrading video streaming quality.

In the meantime, if T-Mobile doesn't change its behavior then it's up to the FCC to follow up.