• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, February 8, 2016

Net neutrality advocates view T-Mobile's Binge On as a threat to Web openness, but the company says its customers have no complaints about the zero-rating service.

More than nine out of 10 (93%) of surveyed customers said they like Binge On, which exempts video streams offered by 40 providers from subscribers' data caps, according to company lobbyist Kathleen Han.

"The point of Binge On is to do something our customers want," Han said last week at an Open Technology Institute conference about zero rating. "If they don't want it, we're not going to offer it. We're going to move on to the next thing."

She went on to urge the Federal Communications Commission to "tread lightly" when it comes to wireless broadband, arguing that the space is evolving quickly, and that consumers have more choice of providers than for home broadband service.

Han also says Binge On enables T-Mobile to better compete with carriers like AT&T, which now has access to a huge trove of content through DirecTV.

Binge On, which is turned on by default, has stirred controversy for several reasons. One is that unless customers opt out of the service, T-Mobile is now throttling video streams offered by all companies -- not just the participants -- to 1.5 Mbps, which is too slow for HD video.

Another is that the service excludes some video distributors, including YouTube, Periscope, educational sites like Coursera and many small companies.

The Federal Communications Commission said last year that it would take a case-by-case approach to whether data caps -- and exemptions from them -- violate net neutrality rules by harming people's ability to use the Web.

Since then, regulators have not clearly signaled their views on zero-ratings initiatives. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler initially said Binge On appeared to be innovative, but also said the agency was taking a wait-and-see approach to the service.

While the FCC mulls the issue, carriers are increasingly launching sponsored data services. Late last week, Verizon began exempting streams its go90 video service from consumers' data caps. And Comcast recently rolled out Stream -- a $15-a-month online video service that doesn't count against consumers' data allotments. Currently, some Comcast subscribers in test markets can only consume 300 GB of data a month before they are charged overages of $10 per 50 GB.

Even as these services have riled net neutrality advocates, zero-ratings schemes also appear consumer friendly -- at least at first glance. After all, many people likely will welcome the opportunity to stream data that doesn't count against their monthly caps.

For that reason alone, the FCC probably will proceed slowly -- if at all -- when it comes to deciding whether toll-free data violates net neutrality rules.