AT&T will lower the quality of most video to 480p starting next year(finance.yahoo.com)
finance.yahoo.com
AT&T will lower the quality of most video to 480p starting next year
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/t-lower-quality-most-video-192210655.html
9 comments
The HN title is missing two key words: "by default." You can turn it off. I'm not particularly happy with what they're doing, but there's a fairly big difference between forcing it on everyone and allowing people to opt-out.
It should be opt-in not opt-out. AT&T saving cash by messing around with peoples' video streams is the opposite of what a good ISP should do.
T-Mobile started the slippery slope and legitimazed the idea of limited video with their "Binge On" program. If you turn on "Binge On", you only get down-sampled, bandwidth-limited video. The trade-off was that they agreed not to charge you for watching downsampled video. They also let you turn this feature on or off, so there's an upside.
But. There's a trick.
T-mobile now offers a single plan, "T-Mobile ONE." All videos are downsampled by default and you can't disable that without paying extra.
The customers' wallets have spoken.
But. There's a trick.
T-mobile now offers a single plan, "T-Mobile ONE." All videos are downsampled by default and you can't disable that without paying extra.
The customers' wallets have spoken.
> The customers' wallets have spoken.
Customer wallets are very silent in cases of natural monopoly like telecommunication services.
Customer wallets are very silent in cases of natural monopoly like telecommunication services.
Why are telecommunication services a natural monopoly?
The same reason as any other utility (gas, power, water). It's expensive to run so many redundant lines to your house (or cell towers, etc) as to make collusion between providers prohibitively difficult. Installed infrastructure serves as a moat; the minimum viable competing product requires a massive investment that can't be done one piece at a time, since your competitor will just undercut you wherever you start to roll out. On top of this you would have to deal with standard anticompetitive market forces like economies of scale and relative bargaining power. If you can't get a half decent price from your provider (on account of being small or on account of pressure exerted on the backbone provider by your competitor), you start at a disadvantage that might be impossible to make up. Investors can give you a jump start, but then you've got the problem of providing them a better return than the incumbent, which itself is pretty efficient at funneling money to its shareholders.
Even if you don't trust the theoretical hand-waving, the fact that the market is the way it is should provide all the proof you need (see: Google Fiber). The "problem" with utility markets is so thoroughly established by precedent that Adam Smith himself used them in Wealth of Nations as an example of an economic sector where markets don't automagically "do the right thing." There are a number of policy approaches to solving the problem, some of which are more "hands on" than others, but it's not a problem that goes away on its own.
It's still vulnerable to technological disruption though! Microwave/mm-wave internet service, which has tiny infrastructure requirements by comparison, might be our salvation if it can be made good enough. That's a difficult problem, but maybe not so difficult as trying to get ISPs regulated as utilities. Google is right to focus their efforts on it.
Even if you don't trust the theoretical hand-waving, the fact that the market is the way it is should provide all the proof you need (see: Google Fiber). The "problem" with utility markets is so thoroughly established by precedent that Adam Smith himself used them in Wealth of Nations as an example of an economic sector where markets don't automagically "do the right thing." There are a number of policy approaches to solving the problem, some of which are more "hands on" than others, but it's not a problem that goes away on its own.
It's still vulnerable to technological disruption though! Microwave/mm-wave internet service, which has tiny infrastructure requirements by comparison, might be our salvation if it can be made good enough. That's a difficult problem, but maybe not so difficult as trying to get ISPs regulated as utilities. Google is right to focus their efforts on it.
With the respect to that last point, though, that's part of how in the 90s we've wound up in the (lack of) regulatory regime we're currently facing: at the time the regulations passed it looked like there might be enough competitor technologies for internet access that the technologies might effectively compete among themselves roughly enough to keep each other in check. Some of the competitor technologies didn't pan out (power line communications being a big one people talked about at the time, which never quite lead to broadband capabilities) and the rest of them were already "captured" to existing niches/hegemonies (the current big three: cable, phone line, cell tower) where providers were already well established due to predecessor technologies.
We can keep hoping for a disruptive technology to wipe the slate clean and give us new players/niches, but infrastructure "disruption" on that sort of scale still tends to lend too much advantage to existing players in the infrastructure game: the natural place to add microwave beaming is between existing cell towers, the satellite internet providers too mostly get bought up by existing infrastructure companies like AT&T and Verizon to shore up portfolios and make FCC mandates that they at least pretend to offer broadband options in rural areas, etc.
Beyond that, too, spectrum is finite and in spectrum auctions tends to favor existing players with war chests over disruptive newcomers. Outside of electromagnetic spectrum hopes, you are back to figuring out how to get physical wires from A to B and dealing with existing physical wire owners (the Google Fiber issues today). Something truly disruptive would be finding a way to do something crazy like IP over Quantum Teleportation and you can't exactly plan for when a breakthrough like that might (or might never) occur.
All of which tl;dr is that technological disruption is more often than not a false hope we tend to use to avoid properly regulating today's technology (or more cynically: yesterday's ancient infrastructure fiefdoms) because it may need to compete with some future technology that never actually arrives.
We can keep hoping for a disruptive technology to wipe the slate clean and give us new players/niches, but infrastructure "disruption" on that sort of scale still tends to lend too much advantage to existing players in the infrastructure game: the natural place to add microwave beaming is between existing cell towers, the satellite internet providers too mostly get bought up by existing infrastructure companies like AT&T and Verizon to shore up portfolios and make FCC mandates that they at least pretend to offer broadband options in rural areas, etc.
Beyond that, too, spectrum is finite and in spectrum auctions tends to favor existing players with war chests over disruptive newcomers. Outside of electromagnetic spectrum hopes, you are back to figuring out how to get physical wires from A to B and dealing with existing physical wire owners (the Google Fiber issues today). Something truly disruptive would be finding a way to do something crazy like IP over Quantum Teleportation and you can't exactly plan for when a breakthrough like that might (or might never) occur.
All of which tl;dr is that technological disruption is more often than not a false hope we tend to use to avoid properly regulating today's technology (or more cynically: yesterday's ancient infrastructure fiefdoms) because it may need to compete with some future technology that never actually arrives.
Ownership of the frequency bands.
Maybe I was down voted because my comment was too brief. In the U.S. companies bid on and purchase wireless spectrum which they then own in perpetuity.
Maybe I was down voted because my comment was too brief. In the U.S. companies bid on and purchase wireless spectrum which they then own in perpetuity.
Out of curiosity, if I subscribe to T-Mobile ONE (as close to "true" unlimited data we're going to get) and use a VPN, then video will stream in HD, without paying for the HD Pass (or whatever it's called), right?
How can they override the video quality over HTTPS? even if they point you to their CDN can't you just DNS hack through this?
If a video hosting website wanted to join T-Mobile's "Binge On" program, they will agree to host their video in such a way that T-Mobile can detect which stream to throttle. This could mean serving it from certain hosts, serving videos over HTTP, or some other out-of-band pen-and-paper agreement between T-Mobile and the video website. See here for technical details for video hosting services: http://www.t-mobile.com/content/dam/tmo/en-g/pdf/BingeOn-Vid...
Lots of video providers went out of their way to jump on board. It had the support of many industry players because "Binge On", at the time, was a net positive for customers.
Now that the infrastructure is in place, T-Mobile can drop the nice marketing.
Lots of video providers went out of their way to jump on board. It had the support of many industry players because "Binge On", at the time, was a net positive for customers.
Now that the infrastructure is in place, T-Mobile can drop the nice marketing.
All they really need to do is throttle the connection, and the software will cut back on quality automatically.
Ie boiling the frog. There are few better examples for why telecoms need to be regulated into dumb pipes.
HN titles are so frequently clickbait lately that this site becoming unreadable.
How? Specifically, I mean. I'm looking at my AT&T console and don't see any option to opt out.
T-Mobile offered an opt out for a year, and then it became a $25 "HD video upgrade".
At least they grandfathered those who opted out.
This move seems pretty pro-consumer (even if ATT did it for their own benefit).
Data caps on wireless transmission (not fiber to your house) are a technical requirement. There's only so much bandwith space, and it's being demanded more than ever before. So, carriers create incentives to use less data, including data caps/limits. If grandma wants to watch House of Cards on her phone, she might not realize that, for whatever reason (poor reception, the power cable fell out of the router, etc), her phone switched over to 4G. This will protect users like her from using up ALL her data at once.
Data caps on wireless transmission (not fiber to your house) are a technical requirement. There's only so much bandwith space, and it's being demanded more than ever before. So, carriers create incentives to use less data, including data caps/limits. If grandma wants to watch House of Cards on her phone, she might not realize that, for whatever reason (poor reception, the power cable fell out of the router, etc), her phone switched over to 4G. This will protect users like her from using up ALL her data at once.
480p is as good as the best pre-HD analog TV, or standard DVDs, and better than VHS which everyone was happy to use back in the day. And certainly fine for most things on a screen as small as a mobile device. I don't really see what there is to complain about, especially as it's optional.
I'd gladly trade higher bandwidth costs, pixelation, freezing and skipping HD video for smooth 480p for most things.
I'd gladly trade higher bandwidth costs, pixelation, freezing and skipping HD video for smooth 480p for most things.
It is not the job of the communications provider to decide what the users get to transmit. And they most certainly shouldn't be in the business of manipulating the users' communication which is what they are doing to change the video resolution.
Anyway this whole discussion will soon be moot as everything moves to SSL and AT&T can only decide wether to transmit it completely or not at all. As they should.
Anyway this whole discussion will soon be moot as everything moves to SSL and AT&T can only decide wether to transmit it completely or not at all. As they should.
One typical solution to this is just to limit ALL bandwith to youtube.com, nflxvideo.net (Netflix's CDN), etc. Then, you rely on the app to intelligantly downgrade video quality for you. SSL won't solve this issue, only a VPN will.
I agree there are benefits as well. But regarding the quality, I have a 4K mobile screen (Sony Xperia Z5 Premium). For others, full HD is practically the norm for higher end phones now. 480p is noticeably worse in some applications, e.g. screencasting.
This seems like something that's really easy to get mad about; but given it's optional nature and the fact that you're watching these videos on a tiny phone screen actually seems like almost universally a good thing.
It is optional for now while they get things in place to follow T-Mobile and introduce a plan where this is the default and you have to pay more to unlock higher quality video. Then you remove plan with the free unlock option or just increase its price to make sure to instead ARPU to the desired level.
Classic boiling of the frog and T-Mobile is a glimpse into the future of where at&t is going with this.
Classic boiling of the frog and T-Mobile is a glimpse into the future of where at&t is going with this.
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Customers can choose to disable it. Given data caps it might not be a bad thing to have it on.
Whether you think they are good or bad tmobile has had a massive impact on the cellphone industry. They were the first to remove subsidies which all the carriers copied. Now the carriers are copying their throttling model.
Whether you think they are good or bad tmobile has had a massive impact on the cellphone industry. They were the first to remove subsidies which all the carriers copied. Now the carriers are copying their throttling model.
Yes, it is good at helping with data caps that carriers imposed. So you pay them extra for more bandwidth at a ridiculous rate or pay them for the "privilege" of getting higher quality video like T-Mobile.
They win through higher fees both ways and consumers are once again screwed through artificial constraints and lack of competition.
They win through higher fees both ways and consumers are once again screwed through artificial constraints and lack of competition.
If AT&T wished to be consumer friendly, they'd implement this in an opt-in manner.
This is another reason to use HTTPS.
HTTPS doesn't mask the source IP block of the content. Pretty easy to throttle Youtube, Netflix, etc based on their CDN blocks.
The original comment is absolutely correct in that if the video stream is delivered via HTTPS it is impossible to downsample it. Now, whether YouTube et al actually use HTTPS for the video stream, I don't know...
The majority of video traffic on the internet is encrypted. But it doesn't need to be downscaled directly by the operator, since almost all streaming services will adapt the actual video quality to the observed bandwidth. All you need to do is detect video traffic (quite easy to do even if it's encrypted) and selectively throttle it. The servers will take care of the rest.
Not true. You can throttle packets by source or destination IP block, and by throttling the connection, the player will be forced down to a lower bitrate rendition.
This is how T-Mobile performs their throttling, and could be done to any class of traffic.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t-mobiles...
This is how T-Mobile performs their throttling, and could be done to any class of traffic.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t-mobiles...
As an aside this type of thing gets me throttled pulling down 500MB+ git repos. Not T-Mobile specifically but Clear.
So what happens when there is only one bitrate available at 1080p and it's encrypted?
Your player is going to stutter hard if it doesn't wait to preload enough of the content.
Disclaimer: My last job was infrastructure at an Internet-only video news org.
Disclaimer: My last job was infrastructure at an Internet-only video news org.
Is it possible to multiplex from various IPs? IPv6 has a huuuuge address space.
A pretty easy traffic pattern to identify and respond to (just like bittorrent or OpenVPN over SSL).
It doesn't need to be downsampled, though -- merely rate-governed.
Yup, this is more a reason to use a VPN.
If they just throttle your bandwidth and not play around with CDN's (ISP's actually mirror and cache YT and Netflix videos) then it doesn't matter.
If they only give you 1mbit/s of bandwidth you aren't going to be watching HD videos unless you are willing to let it constantly buffer, and there are also ways for them to screw with that like resetting the connection every 5min or so.
If they only give you 1mbit/s of bandwidth you aren't going to be watching HD videos unless you are willing to let it constantly buffer, and there are also ways for them to screw with that like resetting the connection every 5min or so.
I've never seen an ISP use TCP resets against any traffic other than BitTorrent, but I suppose it could be done by a particularly aggressive operator.
VPNs cost money. Until it is forced, there isn't much of a point in using a VPN (besides AT&T's wonderful spying track record). VPNs are great but until more are free, it's better to deal with switching a setting.
VPN to a home broadband device is free, modulo ISP data caps.
> Until it is forced, there isn't much of a point in using a VPN
Well, America just elected Trump to office, and here in Europe the situation doesn't look much better (crisis law in France, calls for more and more surveillance state across Europe, and right-wing populists/extremists gaining power in country by country). I'd say there has never been a better argument for VPN/Tor usage than right now.
Well, America just elected Trump to office, and here in Europe the situation doesn't look much better (crisis law in France, calls for more and more surveillance state across Europe, and right-wing populists/extremists gaining power in country by country). I'd say there has never been a better argument for VPN/Tor usage than right now.
Ms Clinton did not communicate any intentions of shutting down the NSA domestic surveillance apparatus, part of Obama's legacy (which she campaigned on).
this.
It doesn't mask the domain either, at least where SNI is involved.
Regardless of SNI the certificate is unencrypted (until TLS 1.3).
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I can't wait for this feature. I know unlimited (reliable) mobile data is pretty much done for in the US, so anything that lets me economise is awesome. You can turn it off. This is a positive thing for me.
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