T-Mobile Will Allow HBO Streaming Without Using Data
By Julie Kelly
T-mobile made a groundbreaking announcement for the mobile market today at its carrier event in Los Angeles. A new mobile plan called “Binge On” allows customers to stream multiple streaming services, including HBO Go, without it adding to their data usage.
On November 20, Binge On starts automatically to any T-Mobile customer with a 3 Gb plan or higher. It kicks in at no additional cost. Don’t expect Binge On to be perfect 1080p streaming. Binge On streaming is capped at 480p, which is considered DVD quality. streaming on Wi-Fi will bump the quality back up to 1080p. T-Mobile does say that as their technology improves, the 480p will be upscaled for better quality on mobile devices.
HBO is just one of the many streaming services available on the Bing On plan. Here’s the full list of included services:
- Netflix
- HBO NOW
- HBO GO
- Hulu
- Sling TV
- Sling Box
- ESPN
- Showtime
- Starz
- Movieplex
- Encore
- T-Mobile TV
- Vevo
- Vessel
- Univision Deportes
- Major League Baseball
- Go90
- DirecT
- Fox Sports
- Fox Sports GO
- NBC Sports
- Crackle
- VUDU
- Ustream
The biggest exclusion from the list is YouTube and its new premium YouTube Red service, but it’s still an impressive list for its new service.
T-Mobile also announced that they will be doubling their data offerings on each of their plans. Plans used to be 1 Gb, 3 Gb and 5 Gb, and now they’re bumped up to 2 Gb, 6 Gb and 10 Gb. These changes and the above list of streaming services may be enough to entice customers of rival carrier to make the switch to T-Mobile.
As a longtime Verizon Customer and former T-Mobile customer, it’s easy to see that T-Mobile has made excellent improvements over the past decade to improve their data offerings for data usage and video streaming. Hopefully other carriers make similar moves to please their customers.