Can someone explain why T-Mobile is legally allowed to provide free streaming for YouTube and Netflix? Didn't net neutrality prevent that? Or am I just out of the loop?
The thing is... I like them preferentially treating YouTube and Netflix traffic by not counting it towards my bandwidth limit. The "fair" alternative sucks: I would simply not stream on my phone anymore because it would be too expensive.
T-Mobile is allowed to do that due to zero-rating, which the FCC is still investigating. I'd expect T-Mobile to be OK (their only requirement is technical; streams need to be TCP); but some of their competitors (AT&T's advertiser-supported model, Verizon's own video service) will probably run into trouble.
And how would T-Mobile be compensated for that? AFAIK, the reason they're able to do this is because Netflix, Youtube, etc. pays them to be part of the program.
It's in T-Mobile's interest to do this for its own network management. The unlimited video is of much lower quality, using less bandwidth. The only agreement between T-Mobile and Netflix/YouTube is for T-Mobile to be allowed to control which quality is served over their network.
The thing is... I like them preferentially treating YouTube and Netflix traffic by not counting it towards my bandwidth limit. The "fair" alternative sucks: I would simply not stream on my phone anymore because it would be too expensive.