If this leak is right, T-Mobile is about to unleash one of its boldest “Un-carrier” moves yet. Evan Blass (a.k.a., @evleaks), who has a solid history with carrier-related leaks, posted on Twitter this morning that T-Mobile is going to announce support for unlimited high-speed video streaming for select streaming services including Netflix and HBO Now, among others.
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While this is still just a rumor, it makes a lot of sense. In the first place, T-Mobile teased us earlier this week with an announcement poster for “Un-carrier X” that featured the tagline, “We never hit pause.” This strongly hints that this announcement will be video-related.
We also know that T-Mobile right now exempts popular music streaming services such as Pandora, Apple Music and Spotify from its data caps, meaning that anyone who uses these streaming services can listen to their music over T-Mobile’s network without having to worry about hitting their monthly limits. So there’s precedent for T-Mobile doing things like this in the past, although pulling the same trick for video streaming would take it to a whole new level.
This announcement would raise some major net neutrality concerns, however. Given that the market for video streaming is still very much in its early days, T-Mobile could be hurting the growth of smaller competitors if it only limits its data cap exemptions to major players like Netflix and HBO Now. We’ll have to wait to hear all the details about “Un-carrier X” when it’s announced next week but on its face it does raise some concerns about how much T-Mobile and other wireless carriers can pick winners and losers in the streaming market.
