According to a study, mobile operators are strangling online video almost all the time

Mobile operators have long claimed that they can limit or slow down data when mobile networks are congested, but a new study suggests that viewing your videos may slow down even when networks are not overloaded. Researchers at Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have discovered that operators limit online video whether or not their mobile networks are congested. The location and time of day also seemed to have little impact, the researchers said.

According to the study released Monday, the four major carriers – AT & T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon – have been strangled. The researchers collected data from more than 600,000 tests in the United States using the Wehe application, which measures the supplier's throttling speed between January 2018 and January 2019. At the Worldwide, they collected data from more than one million tests.

According to the study, YouTube was most often strangled and Vimeo was the least restrained. AT & T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon have all strangled YouTube and Netflix, the researchers said. T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon have also strangled Amazon Prime Video.

"They do it all the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that does not rely on network overload," David Bloomfield, an associate professor at Northeastern University, told Bloomberg.

AT & T stated that it does not limit, discriminate or degrade network performance based on content.

"We offer customers the choice, including speeds and features to manage their data," said AT & T spokesman Jim Greer in a statement. "This application (Wehe) fails to take into account the choice of settings or the user's plan that can affect the speed.We have already been in contact with the application developers to discuss ways to improve the performance of it. "

Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint did not immediately respond to a request for comment. CNET has also contacted the researchers for further comments.

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