Why Free Can Be A Problem On The Internet

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The NY Times seems to think that T-Mobile's new free streaming video plan might not be such a good thing.

The rules, however, do not explicitly prevent telecom companies from coming up with offers like the one T-Mobile announced. The industry calls them “zero rating” plans, because companies that use them treat, or rate, some content as free. Everybody likes free stuff, but the problem with such plans is that they allow phone and cable companies to steer their users to certain types of content. As a result, customers are less likely to visit websites that are not part of the free package.
 
This could be good, if it spurs competitors to do the same (implicitly recognizing caps were never about "congestion" 90% of the time). On the other hand, the potential for abuse is extremely high since this is treating data in a non-neutral manner (point-of-origin).

TMobile says they'll let anyone in. If they stuck to that, if everyone's treated "preferentially" then no one is (effectively net-neutral). I bet Verizon comes up with a stupid way to make it less than ideal though.
 
That is bs... T-Mobile clearly states that any company can participate free of charge. They're not steering anything to anywhere. This is like bitching that people with websites are getting traffic and it's not fair to companies that don't have a web site. If you want the traffic from T-Mobile customers, you're just going to have to make it work with it, or don't.
 
As long as they're not blocking content from providers that choose not to participate in the program I don't see a problem here. It's free to become part of the program and T-Mo even said they'd allow porn sites to participate if they wanted to (though they admitted they'd be unlikely to advertise that if one of the sites in question took them up on the offer).

Leave it to the NYT to try and drum up some controversy where none exists. Slow news day?
 
TMobile does shit like this because they are basically the 3rd or 4th carrier in terms of subscribers in the US. They want more subscribers and must figure this is a way to get a lot of publicity and maybe increase their rolls by some number of new subscribers. Plus, if the QOS ends up being crappy because the network is bogged down, TMobile can just tell all their customers, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth".
 
I guess it is different from having this BS new apps and feeds in various product lines as defaults.
 
I don't know about anyone else, but "free" doesn't really define what I watch or do on the internet. While, yes, I do avoid paying for certain types of things that I would normally watch if they were free, I don't watch stuff just because it is free. Heck, I throw away those Red Plum coupon packs I get in the mail because they never have coupons for the things I buy. Why would I do otherwise with internet video?
 
My guess is that they are either going to be serving their own ads while you watch this content, or they will be selling the user data to advertisers. It's not that subscriptions to these services will be free if you are on T-Mobile's network, just they won't count against your data usage.

I use the tracker on my Galaxy S4 to keep track of when I get close to my limit, and I try to use wifi whenever I can to do my browsing, fb, videos, etc., but I can see this kind of thing screwing that method up, since my phone won't know which data to count. I'd have to spend a little more time looking at the data used by each program, then subtract the totals of the free programs to get the actual usage that counts against my data plan.

Either way, no thanks.
 
Doesn't T-Mobile require the content to be 480P to be eligible for the free service ... this also allows the ISPs to control their bandwidth problem by encouraging people to use lower bandwidth options ... not a bad thing necessarily but there are other implications to free data (nothing is truly free) ... and realistically it doesn't make much sense to stream 1080P or 4K over wireless streams
 
Doesn't T-Mobile require the content to be 480P to be eligible for the free service ... this also allows the ISPs to control their bandwidth problem by encouraging people to use lower bandwidth options ... not a bad thing necessarily but there are other implications to free data (nothing is truly free) ... and realistically it doesn't make much sense to stream 1080P or 4K over wireless streams

720P+ is noticeably better than 480P on my cell phone. I seem to end up watching the cell phone close enough to my eyes that it's like watching a big screen tv from across the room and the differences in detail are clearly noticeable. Maybe that rumored 4K Samsung screen isn't as insane as I was thinking...
 
Time and time again, this sort of practice is what makes the US market shrivel into a rotting hive of monopolies while the free market prospers to the benefit of consumers on the other side of the Atlantic.

People down here are short term thinkers with goldfish memories, they lack the wisdom to see the big picture, to see where this goes longterm. I wouldn't be surprised to see Comcastflix take over and then charge cable TV prices with ads down the road if this takes off, and we deserve it.
 
Well, it's a common practice. Take Credit Cards for example - Visa/MC/AmEx/etc. put rules on place for the merchant that they can't charge fees for the use of a CC (might turn someone away from using the card). So what do some merchants do? They offer a "cash discount". You see this at gas stations all the time. It's essentially working the problem in reverse.

I'd suspect TMo won't be the only one to do it. I can imagine some cable companies might start tightening their data caps and then offering certain services (services/companies they have a stake in) to not count against those caps.
 
I can imagine some cable companies might start tightening their data caps and then offering certain services (services/companies they have a stake in) to not count against those caps.

that's already the way it works... Comcast does not count their xfinity streaming against your cap... but only their services afaik
 
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