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YouTube, Netflix Videos Found to Be Slowed by Wireless Carriers
The largest U.S. telecom companies are slowing internet traffic to and from popular apps like YouTube and Netflix, according to new research from Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The researchers used a smartphone app called Wehe, downloaded by about 100,000 consumers, to monitor which mobile services are being throttled when and by whom, in what likely is the single largest running study of its kind.
Among U.S. wireless carriers, YouTube is the No. 1 target of throttling, where data speeds are slowed, according to the data. Netflix Inc.'s video streaming service, Amazon.com Inc.'s Prime Video and the NBC Sports app have been degraded in similar ways, according to David Choffnes, one of the study's authors who developed the Wehe app.
From January through early May, the app detected "differentiation" by Verizon Communications Inc. more than 11,100 times, according to the study. This is when a type of traffic on a network is treated differently than other types of traffic. Most of this activity is throttling. AT&T Inc. did this 8,398 times and it was spotted almost 3,900 times on the network of T-Mobile US Inc. and 339 times on Sprint Corp.'s network, the study found. The numbers are partly influenced by the size of the networks and user bases. C Spire, a smaller privately held wireless operator, had the fewest instances of differentiation among U.S. providers, while Verizon had the most.
Also at Marketing Land.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 13 2018, @11:27PM (15 children)
Maybe so - but we still dodged the Clinton bullet. And, all in all, Trump isn't as bad as the Dems make him out to be. We've survived equally bad choices in the past.
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Friday September 14 2018, @01:50AM (4 children)
I'm not so sure we've had worse than Trump. I'll grant Hillary wasn't a prize either.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 14 2018, @04:39AM (3 children)
Herbert Hoover. Or are you a Great Depression fan?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday September 14 2018, @08:23AM (2 children)
The parallels between Hoover and Trump are numerous. We just don't have the benefit of hindsight to evaluate Trump yet.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 14 2018, @10:43AM (1 child)
I seriously doubt he's going to manage anything quite so significant as Hoover. The whole reason I've never been especially worried about Trump is he's got little support even within his own party, so there's a very definite limit to how far off the status quo he can take us.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday September 15 2018, @01:31AM
He does seem to have less traction. But arguably, that says more for the people around Trump than it says for Trump himself.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stretch611 on Friday September 14 2018, @09:25AM (9 children)
Hillary would have been a fscking disaster for this country.
Of course, she would have been a lot better than the current idiot who is dismantling all consumer protections, environmental safeguards, and anything remotely considered an Obama achievement. (for the sole purpose of his ego refuses to let Obama be considered as better than him in any way at all.)
Until the US wakes up and votes 3rd party, the 2 parties currently in charge will continue their bullshit policy of only finding a candidate barely able to beat the other guy. Every time that we get to a horrible low point in that regard, both parties manage to find a way to get even worse; and that was definitely the case in 2016.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 14 2018, @10:10AM
Yes . . . but.
There are kernels of truth in the claims that all the regulations are just so much bullshit. Let us consider bureaucracies for a moment. No matter what the mission of an organization may have been when it was created, eventually, that mission is completed, or subsumed into other, larger missions. All agencies tend to accumulate power, authority, personnel, funds, and every other measure of importance.
If it were your job to eliminate excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and you completed that job in ten year, would you be content to take a layoff, go back home, and be forgotten? Most people won't do that. Instead, they'll lobby for authority to eliminate other pollutants, and work to increase their power. Eventually, you could even make it unlawful for any person to pass gas, in public, or in private.
I've mentioned safety regulations a number of times. The political and legal atmospheres, not to mention social atmosphere, of the US dictate that safety is first and foremost. The cost of production doubles, triples, even quadruples in manufacturing, due to over observance of safety rules and regulations. That is a large part of what makes overseas investments so attractive. In effect, all those rules and regulations are pricing us out of markets.
SOME of those claims are just hype, thrown out there to "justify" taking advantage of near slave labor overseas. But, not all of those claims are bogus. A lot of them are very real.
Take a simple tool, like a knife. Back in the day, kids were handed knives to play with and to use, at around age 6, 7, 8, or 9. By the time we were 12, we were EXPECTED to know how to safely handle a knife. Today - kids with knives are viewed as little criminals. The cops are called if some little girl brings a damned plastic knife to school to cut up her brownies. In the work place, production personnel are handed knives, along with a stern lecture on safety. They have to wear mylar gloves, and mylar sleeves, and time is spent teaching each of those personnel how to guide the knife through the material being trimmed. Those personnel are re-trained regularly - like every six weeks or so. Literally man-years are spent observing safety bullshit that preteen children could and should have learned.
Those simple knives sometimes cause minor injuries, in spite of all the rules, regulations, and training. What happens then? In our case, the machine is shut down, multiple personnel have to be called to the scene, first to treat the injury (no matter how minor) then to "sterilize" the scene. FFS, I can't count the number of times I've suffered a tiny pin prick from one tool or another. I wipe the finger, palm, or whatever, and maybe put a band-aid on it. I don't want or need fifteen people responding to a pin prick as if it were a genuine emergency! It's stupid, it's wasteful, and it's embarrassing.
No, I'm not onboard with completely dismantling all the worker and consumer safety rules and regulations. But, I am perfectly aware that what we have today is complete and utter bullshit. Having attempted to run my own business at one point in my life, I am perfectly aware how all that bullshit can destroy even a competent business. Marginal businesses that are less competent will be eaten alive by stupid regulations.
As with most things, when conditions have become intolerable, we don't react appropriately. Instead, we overreact. That's Trump. He wants to destroy all the stupid shit that has cost him over the years, and he's not smart enough to just tone things down to a reasonable level.
To summarize all of that - it's a shared responsibility between the "liberals" and the conservative business people. One side has pushed things much too far, the other side wants to destroy what the first side has done. Or, stated differently, you reap what you sow.
The dem/progressive/liberal side of the US has created the environment against which Trump is pushing. Trump may not be real bright, but he apparently recognizes extreme stupidity when he sees it. In some cases, at least.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 14 2018, @10:47AM (7 children)
Trump's not doing much of anything significant that can't be undone by whoever gets the office next time. Hillary's badness would have made it to law rather than executive orders.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @12:19PM (1 child)
"Trump's not doing much of anything significant that can't be undone by whoever gets the office next time."
You'd be surprised how expensive it can be to win back allies you took a shit on for 4-8 years.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 14 2018, @01:47PM
I wouldn't put money on that. It's not like they're spoiled for choices in alliances with superpowers.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Friday September 14 2018, @02:55PM (1 child)
The most difficult thing to regain is how we are perceived and/or trusted by other countries.
The fact is, we have broken treaties thanks to Trump(Iran in particular). And he constantly threatens to not hold up other agreements. (NATO)
How can we regain the trust of our allies, if any time we switch presidents, they can break all existing treaties? Our word on those treaties will not be worth shit.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 14 2018, @03:26PM
Allies who don't hold up their ends of treaties are not allies, they're mooches and not worth associating with. Treaties that were first broken by other parties are no longer binding to us.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday September 15 2018, @05:23AM (2 children)
You really think a Republican Congress would have passed whatever laws she wanted passed?
Personally I like governments that are hamstrung and one way is having different parties in control of different parts of government.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday September 15 2018, @11:11AM (1 child)
I think she had the backroom political skills to get half a dozen Republicans to flip on votes that mattered to her, absolutely.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday September 15 2018, @02:58PM
Perhaps, not that it matters now.