AT&T to limit video quality by default in hopes to help customers reduce data usage

[Mooshi]

AT&T is ass,  Verizon has the network, but charge for every little thing like greedy asses, Tmobile throttle their "unlimited" data like lying asses...and Sprint is there. 

[No Nrg]

On ‎11‎/‎13‎/‎2016 at 1:27 AM, Nicholatian said:

I don’t know what you’re talking about, referencing T-Mobile. They’re not doing the same thing, and in fact are encouraging the opposite not only with things like Binge-On, but with truly unlimited data via T-MobileONE.

 

Not that my provider (yes, full disclosure I’m with T-Mobile) really cares, because they sell me the aforementioned no-compromises package already. I can tether and watch video however I like.

It says right in the Binge-on product details that it only covers up to 480p video.

[jaggysnake57]

i dont see this as such a bad thing.....i mean your more likely to switch it off than switch it on so having it on by default might not be such a bad thing

[LAwLz]

13 minutes ago, jaggysnake57 said:

i dont see this as such a bad thing.....i mean your more likely to switch it off than switch it on so having it on by default might not be such a bad thing

Until AT&T decides to do like T-Mobile and charge you to turn it off...

[Remix]

On 11/13/2016 at 4:43 AM, LAwLz said:

T-mobile does deep packet inspection and throttles all kinds of videos unless you pay a fee to disable it. 

Hopefully they, and AT&T gets sued into oblivion because this is exactly the type of thing net neutralitywas suppose to stop. 

 

Every provider logs traffic and inspects it with DPI for analytics for historical retention (think DMCA). T-Mobile ONE made it very clear on both their website and when you opt-in what the intent of a plan like this is. Every provider has some gimmick on a UDP. Verizon, T-Mobile, and At&t all deprioritize your usage after 20+ GB (something within the 20s), and T-Mobile and Sprint are already throttling video to 480p. Every provider is breaking Net Neutrality by those terms. Here's the catch. T-Mobile still provides Simple Choice plans which are tiered data, and it is your choice to opt-in for BingeOn, and it is completely free to opt-out. So sure, while you may have to pay extra to stream any quality video over T-Mobile ONE, the intent of this plan is for power-users who consume massive amounts of data. People complain about not having UDP available when clearly we know why... (users buying a UDP and tethering for home internet, abusing data by streaming 100s of GBs per month, etc) there honestly isn't an argument to the discussion with T-Mobile.

[LAwLz]

4 minutes ago, Remix said:

Every provider logs traffic and inspects it with DPI for analytics for historical retention (think DMCA). T-Mobile ONE made it very clear on both their website and when you opt-in what the intent of a plan like this is. Every provider has some gimmick on a UDP. Verizon, T-Mobile, and At&t all deprioritize your usage after 20+ GB (something within the 20s), and T-Mobile and Sprint are already throttling video to 480p. Every provider is breaking Net Neutrality by those terms. Here's the catch. T-Mobile still provides Simple Choice plans which are tiered data, and it is your choice to opt-in for BingeOn, and it is completely free to opt-out. So sure, while you may have to pay extra to stream any quality video over T-Mobile ONE, the intent of this plan is for power-users who consume massive amounts of data. People complain about not having UDP available when clearly we know why... (users buying a UDP and tethering for home internet, abusing data by streaming 100s of GBs per month, etc) there honestly isn't an argument to the discussion with T-Mobile.

I don't think you understand Net Neutrality if you think throttling after 20+GB is against it.

Also, "everyone else does it too!" is a real shitty argument. By the way, BingeOn is opt-out, not opt-in.

 

Hopefully both AT&T and T-Mobile gets sued for this.

[PocketNerd]

On 11/13/2016 at 1:24 AM, DatSpeed said:

-snip-

I don't see the issue here or why the FCC would consider this a violation of Net Neutrality. AT&T is providing an optional service that is not aimed at any specific website that the user can turn on and off at no cost.

I personally limit the quality on videos I need to stream on my phone when on data (despite being on an unlimited plan) because of data consumption and I would actually love the ability to set a toggle for all video, regardless of website or app.

[LAwLz]

50 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

I don't see the issue here or why the FCC would consider this a violation of Net Neutrality. AT&T is providing an optional service that is not aimed at any specific website that the user can turn on and off at no cost.

I personally limit the quality on videos I need to stream on my phone when on data (despite being on an unlimited plan) because of data consumption and I would actually love the ability to set a toggle for all video, regardless of website or app.

Wait, you have an unlimited data plan and you still lower the quality of videos? Why?

[Remix]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I don't think you understand Net Neutrality if you think throttling after 20+GB is against it.

Also, "everyone else does it too!" is a real shitty argument. By the way, BingeOn is opt-out, not opt-in.

 

Hopefully both AT&T and T-Mobile gets sued for this.

1

Okay, so deprioritizing data isn't considered against Net Neutrality (isn't this throttling? Yes) but BingeOn and similar programs (At&t offers a similar option, for much fewer services) is? We've got a sure argument. BingeOn is by default enabled, but it's not a hassle to disable. As a response to "Everyone does it too!" you cannot say you want At&t and T-Mobile to get sued when clearly Sprint and Verizon go against this too. But hey! It's the internet.

[michaelocarroll007]

17 hours ago, mariushm said:

Like with many things, it can be disabled " at this moment" , a few weeks or months later maybe the page where you can change the setting starts to go bad, randomly failing to make the change and disable the feature, and then you'd have to call support and wait half an hour or more and if you're lucky the tech support person will schedule an engineer to check the setting within a couple of days or until you forget.. or until you call again

 

Or maybe in a few months they manage to kill some laws or pass some new laws which would allow them to set that to always on, after all it's new Republican regime, new judges..

 

You accept bandwidth caps like Comcast's 100 GB, now you accept having the content of the pages you see modified (how would they pick the SD versions of Youtube videos for you if not by changing the scripts on pages)

 

Maybe a bit joking, but Youtube should just mess around for a month or so and re-encode all their 480p content at 10mbps or something ridiculous and lower their 720p to 1-2 mbps from whatever is now (3-6 mbps if i remember correctly)... maybe have special 480p encodes just for AT&T ...

 the way tmobile supposibly does this is not just select youtubes 480p for you. it takes the youtube video and runs it through a downscale/ lower bit rate on tmobiles side then sends it to your phone so youtube could offer 1080p videos only and youll still get 480p quaility 

[michaelocarroll007]

37 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Wait, you have an unlimited data plan and you still lower the quality of videos? Why?

 Battery Life maybe? Less time using LTE and less proccesor power. that and a lot of the att plans are not actually unlimited.  Either way 720p is more then enough for phone videos and i think would be a good universal setting. Though when i have unlimited with Tmobile i used 1440p videos on youtube lol  used 120gb as my highest about per month 

[PocketNerd]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Wait, you have an unlimited data plan and you still lower the quality of videos? Why?

Because the video loads faster, and there's still throttling after X usage like most plans. 

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, Remix said:

Okay, so deprioritizing data isn't considered against Net Neutrality (isn't this throttling? Yes) but BingeOn and similar programs (At&t offers a similar option, for much fewer services) is? We've got a sure argument. BingeOn is by default enabled, but it's not a hassle to disable. As a response to "Everyone does it too!" you cannot say you want At&t and T-Mobile to get sued when clearly Sprint and Verizon go against this too. But hey! It's the internet.

The difference is slowing down all traffic vs slowing down specific traffic.

Saying "hey now, you're using way too much so we will have to slow you down. Otherwise it will have a negative impact on everyone else" is fine.

Saying "hey, we will throttle and lower the quality of this particular use case." is not fine.

Does Sprint and Verizon throttle specific traffic too? If that's the case then they should be sued too. If they just throttle all data then I don't have any issue with that (although they should not call it "unlimited" if they have soft and/or hard caps).

 

 

If you find this concept hard to understand then think of different data types as different races of people. Saying "this bus is full, so nobody is allowed to get on" is fine. Saying "we have too many black people on this bus, but we can probably fit a few more white people" is not. In this case, video are the black people and everything else are the white people.

[Remix]

22 hours ago, LAwLz said:

The difference is slowing down all traffic vs slowing down specific traffic.

Saying "hey now, you're using way too much so we will have to slow you down. Otherwise it will have a negative impact on everyone else" is fine.

Saying "hey, we will throttle and lower the quality of this particular use case." is not fine.

Does Sprint and Verizon throttle specific traffic too? If that's the case then they should be sued too. If they just throttle all data then I don't have any issue with that (although they should not call it "unlimited" if they have soft and/or hard caps).

 

 

If you find this concept hard to understand then think of different data types as different races of people. Saying "this bus is full, so nobody is allowed to get on" is fine. Saying "we have too many black people on this bus, but we can probably fit a few more white people" is not. In this case, video are the black people and everything else are the white people.

 

Sprint introduced throttling video streaming. Verizon will kick users off for using too much data on UDPs. 

[elkenrod]

Salesperson at the AT&T kiosk trying to persuade you to purchase an expensive phone with "better resolution"......

 

.....video is 480p by default.

 

 

Salesperson then Doesn't bother to tell you how to disable it.

 

[Stefan1024]

Next step: increase to price for everybody who is not using the stream saver...

[Xanthe_2871]

On 11/13/2016 at 1:43 AM, LAwLz said:

T-mobile does deep packet inspection and throttles all kinds of videos unless you pay a fee to disable it. 

Hopefully they, and AT&T gets sued into oblivion because this is exactly the type of thing net neutrality was suppose to stop. 

Couldn't have said it better myself!

[Sauron]

pls stahp

On 11/14/2016 at 3:09 AM, Shakaza said:

What the heck is wrong with these greedy dimwits!?

It's called a monopoly.

[PLME888]

All the computing power spent in inspecting the package, can be spent in actual network traffic... 

[Guest Kloaked]

On 11/13/2016 at 9:29 AM, hey_yo_ said:

Wouldn't that be a violation of Net Neutrality rules?

Net Neutrality isn't actually written into law. If it were, we wouldn't have misleading data caps or things like T-Mobile binge-on since you're paying for data and you get to use it how you want.

 

What we have currently is an in-between to true free internet and the extremist corporate monopoly and that's probably as good as it's going to get. I hope someone teaches the Republicans how the internet works so they can fix this garbage.

[Thony]

Instead of improving their side, they punish the customer. Great approach, hope u burn in hell twats.