T-Mobile CEO John Legere is concerned — confused, frankly — by the way Google and the EFF have reacted to Binge On recently. He can't figure out why everyone doesn't love the way he's giving his customers choices that no other carrier is offering, and is downright angry at the people confusing his customers by claiming his company is doing something they shouldn't be doing in order to offer people all the free video they can consume. He knows his customers love it — they tell him on Twitter every day — which is a big part of why this whole accusation of throttling is so confusing and concerning.

Well, John, let me spell it out for you.

Let's first stop by the T-Mobile website advertising Binge On. Without a doubt, this is a pretty sweet deal. Unlimited free video streaming from the services T-Mobile has partnered with, and in return all you have to do is let T-Mobile limit the quality of that video to DVD quality, which is usually right around 480p, or "standard definition." Better still, this feature costs you nothing and is available to anyone paying for more than 3GB of monthly data. Sure, it doesn't cover every single streaming service right now, but it's a new service and growing all the time. If you want to watch something in HD, you need only flip a switch and disable Binge On. Simple stuff, and a seriously generous offer on T-Mobile's part.

Before YouTube can compensate for the dramatic decrease in available bandwidth, the user is left with a stuttering, buffering video for seemingly no reason.

What isn't mentioned anywhere on the first page of this marketing site is what happens when you watch something from a service that isn't a Binge On partner. To get any information on that at all, you have to head down to the little FAQ at the bottom of the page, hidden by javascript. Open the first bubble and you'll see "almost all other video streaming is optimized for mobile so you watch 3 times more video with your data plan" in the explanation for how Binge On is going to work. No other details, just "optimized for mobile" and a vague benefit to how much more data you get to spend on other things. That doesn't sound like a bad thing at all, and it's not like we won't see almost everyone partner with T-Mobile eventually.

Here's where things get fuzzy. YouTube — without a doubt the biggest video streaming service on the planet — is not a Binge On partner. When T-Mobile tries to "optimize" a YouTube stream through Binge On, the end result fits into the wrong side of that "almost" we saw in the FAQ. YouTube sees the speed of your connection to its servers and offers you a video file that matches that speed, so you ge the best quality without any problems. When your connection allows for 10mbps, you get an HD file. But when Binge On sees that video file, it slows the connection down to 1.5mbps to force YouTube to "optimize" for your screen. Before YouTube can compensate for the dramatic decrease in available bandwidth, the user is left with a stuttering, buffering video for seemingly no reason.