You may or may not have heard, but T-Mobile debuted their Un-carrier X a few days back. As @evleaks pointed out, it would be like T-Mobile’s Music Freedom program, but for videos. He couldn’t have been more right, because he even had the name “Binge On” correct. When John Legere and T-Mobile officially announced the program, one notable video service was missing.
Currently, Binge On supports the following video services: Crackle, DirecTV, Encore, ESPN, Fox Sports, Fox Sports GO, Go90, HBO GO, HBO NOW, Hulu, Major League Baseball, Movieplex, NBC Sports, Netflix, Showtime, Sling Box, Sling TV, Starz, T-Mobile TV, Univision Deportes, Ustream, Vessel, Vevo, VUDU. Out of all those, you’ll notice that YouTube is missing. The world’s largest streaming provider is absent, not because T-Mobile doesn’t want to include them, but because they have run into some technical difficulties.
The issue T-Mobile is having according to the Wall Street Journal, is that they are having a hard time defining what is or isn’t a video. The software T-Mobile employs identifies incoming traffic to determine what is a video on an approved service or an email, other sites, etc. The issue is that it can’t always identify that with YouTube. It has to do with YouTube switching between HTTPS protocol, which T-Mobile can detect, and UDP, which it has a hard time with.
The good news is that T-Mobile and YouTube have had preliminary talks and will collaborate, but it will just take a little more work. There is no timeline for YouTube to be included on the Binge On plan, but Grant Castle who is the vice president of engineering at T-Mobile stated “We are in a hurry, honestly,” so stay patient.
