As with literally anything, truth is relative. I’m going to try to objectively explain this whole T-mobile BingeOn ordeal by taking it step by step.

The Community Approach

Community matters, Customer pain points matter, and looking out for the whole organization matters. Now, maybe you don’t think so. And certainly, t-mobile’s ability to deliver reliable data to it’s entire customer base isn’t your responsibility or even your concern as a customer. But it does matter, especially to t-mobile, and it should matter to any conscious user. If you’re pulling a huge video stream down on your T-mobile device, and 10 of your neighbors are at the same time, maybe the next guy who tries has a little more latency because of, well, you. Now, does that matter? Traditionally, Verizon and AT&T would just say no, add extra spectrum/cell sites and back-haul, encourage you to use more data, and keep charging you for your every kilobyte of data. T-mobile benefits from BingeOn. There is no doubt about it. But so do the users of the network, and in big ways. Free video streaming? Who cares what the bitrate is if it at least looks good? If we were streaming 144p video for free, I’d see why people are so upset. T-mobile is providing a real benefit in this service. If Verizon or AT&T added this option, it would be a $15 or $20 service to allow you to use unlimited video, even though it benefits them too. T-mobile didn’t charge a damned thing for it.

Pixel Density and Visual Acuity

I think this is best understood by a little history. I remember when 1080p televisions were launching, and there were all of these studies about what size of TV the difference between 1080p and 720p are even discernible. Most of the studies I saw showed that differences were at 50 inches diagonal. Meaning, if you bought a TV less than 50 inches, you didn’t need to buy a 1080p TV. Eventually, as the price of 1080p came down, most of the 720p TVs don’t exist anymore. Assuming a 6 inch screen (most modern flagship phones) your eyes must be closer than 2 feet to see the available detail of a 480p video stream. For 720, you have to be closer than 1 foot away from your screen. I’d say that most people watch video from 2 feet away from their eyeballs at least. If, for some crazy ass reason, you need to watch your phone from less than 12 inches in front of your eyeballs, you might need to get some glasses, which T-mobile does not sell, and your concerns are wholly focused on the wrong industry. Warby Parker makes some cheap glasses. That said, if you just really really want to watch video at 720p, or 1080p, then turn BingeOn off and pay for the data (which comes unlimited at a pretty good rate).

For more on resolutions and viewing distances, and for the distance information I included here, I used the calculator found here: http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/

Throttling or Optimizing

Semantics. This is as semantics as a thing can get. Sure, T-mobile is throttling your video stream. I guess. I mean, how do you suppose adaptive bitrate technology in streaming video works? If Netflix sees you have 1mb/s connection, it provides the highest bitrate viewing experience that will stream well on that speed of connection. I don’t know what people thought, that T-mobile was personally live decoding and reencoding the video streams of ~60 milllion subscribers? You’d be paying for that, trust me. The electric bills for that much processing power would bankrupt T-mobile. Online video services already have adaptive bitrate technology. T-mobile is using it. They didn’t design it. They are a wireless company. Providing a limited amount of bandwidth for video streams does indeed optimize video for the mobile device.

Opt-in or Opt-out — Customer Choice

I think about my mom first when I think about this. It doesn’t matter how many times or in what words I would try to explain what streaming is, what bitrates and bandwidth are, what video resolution is, or how to use the t-mobile app to add or delete a service, she would be lost. This is the same logic I employ when someone asks me if they should get an android or apple smartphone. I simply say: “Do you love technology, do you want to know how it works, and why?” If they say no, I say apple. It works. People love it. Even technology people love it. It doesn’t prompt you to pick things you might not understand, it just does things when you touch them. This is exactly the way my mom uses netflix. She clicks the show she wants and it plays. If the bitrate isn’t 720p, she doesn’t know. She really doesn’t even care, unless it doesn’t work. Often with new technological innovation, opt-in would never result in much of a userbase at all. As is the case with software, If you just push your new version out to users automatically (as almost all modern software does), they start using it. Most likely, they don’t know the difference even though there are security fixes, optimizations, bug fixes, etc. If they don’t like it, they complain, roll back their software, or submit a bug report that gets fixed in the next version. This is identical in nature. If BingeOn doesn’t work the way you want, you can complain (reddit post), opt-out(roll back), or reach out to t-mobile(bug report). The significant difference is that the “roll back” option, is completely supported by t-mobile. They are never making you switch to BingeOn. They aren’t making you do anything.

John’s Frustration

Innovation is always met with criticism. It comes with criticism after criticism, and sometimes the critic kills great innovation. I don’t think Legere is lying. I don’t think the entire t-mobile team decided to defraud customers. I’m not sure why so many people are so against this damn movement. They approached it in the most customer beneficial way possible, and in that regard, I understand why John is pissed. But think about it for just a second, would a company that’s experiencing massive growth and becoming constantly known for their values, for taking care of their customers, reducing pain points, and edging out the competition honestly risk their namesake on somehow hurting it’s customers? They wouldn’t. They aren’t. T-mobile would have gone on adding customers just the same without BingeOn. And somehow ripping off ~60 million subscribers would be impossible to recover from. They added it for the customer, primarily. So you can watch as much video as you want. It saves them on network congestion, no doubt about it. But this is a good thing. So when you need the network, it’s got some available capacity. It’s your network, maybe that’s the best way to look at this whole damned situation. You get complete choice. Watch unlimited video at an optimized streaming rate on any T-mobile plan with a data bucket, or use unlimited internet in any way you want (Stream 4K video to your 6 inch screen if it makes you feel good) by buying an unlimited plan. Either way, this issue is dead. T-mobile hasn’t done a damned thing wrong.