For T-Mobile USA customers who pay extra to watch high-definition video, one of the company's most annoying inventions was the "HD day pass." Instead of allowing video to stream in high definition at all times, T-Mobile has only let customers enable HD video for 24 hours at a time. Customers who pay for the $85-per-month "T-Mobile One Plus" plan are given "unlimited HD day passes," but to actually use them, you have to go to the T-Mobile app or website and change the video quality setting every single day.
That's finally about to change, T-Mobile told Ars. The move is an outgrowth of yesterday's decision to add HD video to the entry-level T-Mobile One plan that costs $70 a month. T-Mobile initially told us yesterday that there were no changes to the HD day passes, meaning that customers would still have to enable HD video every 24 hours or have video revert to 480p. Later yesterday, T-Mobile said that customers would only have to enable HD video once every 30 days.
But after hearing from angry customers, T-Mobile is going to make it "one and done." Starting Friday when the plan changes take effect, T-Mobile One customers will only have to enable HD video one time, and the feature will remain enabled as long as they have the same monthly plan, T-Mobile said today.
"Yesterday, we did have it at 30 days, but we heard from customers. We always listen to our customers and so now, you turn it on and you’re done," a T-Mobile spokesperson told Ars.
The change will apply to all three T-Mobile One plans, which have no data caps and overage fees and range in price from $70 to $95 a month. While the $70 plan gains HD video for the first time, the $85 and $95 plans that came with unlimited HD day passes will continue to get HD video without the need to enable it every day.
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By default, all T-Mobile One plans limit video resolution to DVD quality. Enabling HD allows video to stream at the original resolution set by each video provider, according to T-Mobile. Originally, customers on the $70-per-month plan could get HD video for 24 hours at a time by purchasing HD day passes for $3 each.
Many customers are likely satisfied with 480p video on a smartphone screen, and setting that as the default lets T-Mobile limit bandwidth use, making network congestion less likely. But forcing customers to re-enable a feature they've paid for every day always seemed like an unnecessary nuisance, especially when customers were required to pay extra for HD video.
Changing it to once a month would have been an improvement, but the final decision to go to a "one and done" system is a more customer-friendly decision. If customers are actively choosing HD video, why force them to make the choice again every day? While T-Mobile always insisted that it was easy to activate an HD day pass, the policy could force customers to leave a video app and go into another app in order to activate higher-quality video. The soon-to-be-defunct policy probably helped reduce bandwidth usage, but it came at the expense of annoyed users.
The other major change announced yesterday pertains to high-speed tethering. The $70 T-Mobile One plan currently limits mobile hotspot speeds to 512kbps, but starting Friday, that same price tier will include 10GB of high-speed hotspot data per month. Customers will still have to buy the $95-per-month plan in order to get unlimited high-speed tethering data.
Existing customers will have to go into their account to accept the new terms and activate the 10GB of high-speed tethering. T-Mobile tells us this is necessary to meet a legal requirement. But like HD video, high-speed tethering will only have to be activated once after the changes take effect Friday.
T-Mobile's announcement yesterday came hours after Verizon said it would offer unlimited smartphone data for $80 per month and include HD video and 10GB of high-speed tethering.
How can T-Mobile afford to offer its Binge On streaming video service at no extra cost to its Simple Choice customers who pay for more than 3GB of LTE data a month?
Won't it be crummy video? Won't it cause congestion on T-Mobile's networks and lead to frustrations for customers?
T-Mobile officials offered a few technical details after Tuesday's announcement to shed light on how it will make video streaming from 24 content providers possible starting Sunday.
T-Mobile called its streaming service "optimized," although some analysts have preferred to call it "compressed" video that delivers 480p quality to smartphones and tablets. That's far lower resolution than the widely available HD 1080p quality. Some analysts referred to T-Mobile's proprietary technology as a form of "adaptive bitrate optimization coding technology." This is software that can automatically adapt the amount of data sent to appear on a smartphone from larger devices.
CEO John Legere said the quality will be "DVD or better," and said users won't need HD quality on a smartphone or tablet, although they might prefer HD on a larger screen in a living room.
"We've optimized the video stream not to use useless amounts of data," he said at Tuesday's launch event. The problem that T-Mobile tried to solve was to "find a way to stream to give an incredible experience but one that doesn't waste [data]." Binge On uses one-third the data of a normal video stream when it's carried over LTE.
T-Mobile released a side-by-side online comparison (38MB download) of how its optimized Binge On video on a smartphone looks next to HD video on a smartphone. Some differences in video quality are noticeable in the comparison, although Legere argued the differences are acceptable.
"Don't get hung up on its being 480p. It's DVD quality or better and not discernable on a device in hand," Legere said. "If you want to mirror it to a big screen, just turn [Binge On] off [and use paid LTE streaming]. It's not perfect, but try it. It optimizes for what a device needs now."
The secret video streaming software that T-Mobile uses is proprietary, and the company wouldn't disclose development partners.
Officials said that T-Mobile contacted streaming video content partners, including HBO, Hulu and Netflix, and asked them to work with T-Mobile software that would provide video streaming only for smartphone or tablet-size screens. Content providers have traditionally sent video that can be presented on a large screen, which carries the extra, wasted data.
CTO Neville Ray said 480p provides "outstanding quality," and promised that T-Mobile will further optimize the video stream that's being delivered in a multi-year program.
In an interview, Grant Castle, T-Mobile's vice president of engineering services, said T-Mobile configured its data packet core network to be able to identify video streams. "We found that how video was being delivered, whether for desktops or mobile, the providers don't differentiate," he said. "We identify the video and signal back to send a mobile optimized version to this consumer. We don't really touch it."
In addition, T-Mobile also created a toggle switch, so if a customer wants a higher quality version to mirror to a larger display, the customer can turn off Binge On.
T-Mobile uses existing technologies to provide Binge On, but is not transcoding the video as some other carriers do, Castle said. "We're helping the video adapt [to mobile] correctly," he explained. "It's not that tricky to do, but the trick was to identify the signatures of all the video providers."
Castle said that when he was first asked to find a way to offer free video to customers it seemed impossible. "The first day, I thought, no way. Later we saw a lot of video providers were offering a fat desktop version. But why? we asked them. They said, 'We thought you'd like that and thought we'd be doing you a favor.' We think that's a waste and said let's send the right amount of data."
In his normal fashion, Legere blasted competitors like Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint for wanting to send more video data than is really needed for smartphones, so that customers would break through their data limits and then incur expensive overage charges. "We started the un-carrier movement to fix a stupid, broken, arrogant industry," Legere said. "Customers are living in fear or in shock of their bill."
Some analysts worried that T-Mobile's network could grow congested with too much Binge On usage. At some theoretical point, even with a T-Mobile LTE network serving 302 million Americans, congestion is possible, they said.
If T-Mobile's customer usage soars with Binge On, "the benefits in terms of customer adds and lower churn could be offset if the network does not live up to expectations," said Wells Fargo market analyst Jennifer Fritzsche.
T-Mobile's Castle was confident that the network would run smoothly. "I'm working every day to not get congested. By moving our spectrum to LTE and with coming bid auctions, we'll stay well ahead of capacity. Neville Ray couldn't allow that to happen. We do have the nation's fastest network, and we're more than happy to add more customers."
T-Mobile is willing to work with any streaming video provider that meets its technical standards, company officials said, and T-Mobile won't charge the providers for the service.
So far, Google's YouTube service and Facebook video are not among the streaming services supported by Binge On. Some experts estimate that those two sources make up well over half of all the streaming video available on the Internet. Castle said there is a "small class of videos with a different identity from others. If it's Google or Facebook, we're happy to work with them."
While analysts said HTTPS encryption on YouTube might be the reason it is not yet on Binge On, Castle said, "it's less about encryption and more about the delivery mechanism they use, which is UDP (User Datagram Protocol)."
Binge On isn't only for consumers and can also be applied to T-Mobile business customer plans.
Mike Katz, senior vice president of marketing, said in an interview that T-Mobile has seen "huge success" in adding business customers, mostly smaller companies. "They've been leaving Sprint and AT&T in droves."
Streaming video is applicable to some work-related activities, but is also a service that typical workers want to have available on a smartphone at lunch or other free time, he added.
In addition to announcing Binge On, T-Mobile doubled the data available for the same price for both consumer and business customers. Four business lines with 6GB each will cost $120 per month for a limited time. T-Mobile also dropped the price for 11 or more lines by a dollar, from $16 to $15 per line.