YouTube Says T-Mobile is Degrading Its Video Quality

YouTube isn’t a partner for T-Mobile’s Binge On feature, but the video-centric company says that the Magenta Carrier is downgrading its video quality anyway.

In a statement made by YouTube to The Wall Street Journal, the company is accusing T-Mobile of interfering with its video traffic and delivering media to users at a lower quality.

The carrier is downgrading its video streams on T-Mobile subscriber’s phones to 480p anyway — something that T-Mobile has said in the past shouldn’t be the case. Obviously, this isn’t going over well with YouTube:

“YouTube, which is owned by Alphabet Inc., said T-Mobile is effectively throttling, or degrading, its traffic. “Reducing data charges can be good for users, but it doesn’t justify throttling all video services, especially without explicit user consent,” a YouTube spokesman said.”

T-Mobile officially announced Binge On in November of this year. With the feature, those who activate Binge On can stream content from a variety of providers, including HBO Now, Netflix, and others, without impacting their data allotment every month. However, the catch is that these subscribers need to stream that content at 480p, which T-Mobile calls “DVD quality.” Subscribers can deactivate Binge On, which should subsequently boost video streams up to 1080p if preferred by the user, but should not be downgraded by default from the carrier.

What’s more, as mentioned above, YouTube isn’t a partner with T-Mobile, so YouTube’s video content shouldn’t be getting downgraded at all. However, the Internet Association is backing up YouTube’s claim, saying that Binge On “appears to involve the throttling of all video traffic, across all data plans, regardless of network congestion.”

Are you using Binge On from T-Mobile?

[Source]