• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, January 12, 2016

T-Mobile CEO John Legere recently dismissed concerns about Binge On raised by the digital liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation.

But this week, he is taking a more conciliatory tone. In an "open letter" posted on the company's site, Legere apologizes "for offending EFF and its supporters."

"Just because we don’t completely agree on all aspects of Binge On doesn’t mean I don’t see how they fight for consumers," he writes. "We both agree that it is important to protect consumers' rights and to give consumers value."

Legere's apology comes several days after he blasted the EFF for criticizing the company's decision to automatically throttle all video to 480 lines per screen, considered DVD quality.

"Why are you stirring up so much trouble, and who pays you?" he asked last week, referring to the 26-year-old organization.

The controversy between T-Mobile and the EFF centers on Binge On, a zero-rating service introduced by the carrier in November. Binge On exempts video streams offered by more than three dozen providers from consumers' data caps. But the downside is that T-Mobile is throttling all video, not just streams offered by the 38 BingeOn participants.

The company allows consumers to turn off Binge On, but introduced the plan on an opt-out basis. The EFF last week called on T-Mobile to make Binge On opt-in, and also urged the Federal Communications Commission to take action.

Legere says the company plans to meet with the EFF, but insists that the company's opt-out approach helps consumers.

"We strive to default all of our customer benefits to 'ON,'" he writes. "Can you imagine the disappointment, if people saw our TV commercials about Binge On, then went to watch 10 hours of video expecting it to be free, and only THEN learned that they needed to go into their settings to activate this new benefit?"

He also says that the decision to degrade all video for BingeOn users will benefit them. "Most video streams come in at incredibly high resolution rates that are barely detectable by the human eye on small device screens and this is where the data in plans is wasted," Legere writes. "The result is that the data in your bucket is stretched by delivering streamed video in DVD quality."

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler initially said that Binge On appeared "highly innovative and highly competitive."

But last month, the agency pressed T-Mobile to address questions about Binge On, including the decision to degrade all video by default. The FCC hasn't yet said whether it's troubled by the new program.