T-Mobile adds ABC, Disney and others to Binge On as Legere jabs Verizon's Go90

T-Mobile once again added a litany of new service providers to its Binge On offering. And once again, CEO John Legere took advantage of the news to take shots at Verizon's Go90 video offering.

ABC, Apple Music, Disney, Dish Anywhere, Fox Now and Nat Geo TV joined T-Mobile's zero-rated data service, enabling users to watch their content on mobile without incurring data charges. The carrier also added content from smaller providers including DramaFever, Shalom World and D-Pan.TV, which broadcasts in American sign language.

More than 100 content providers have joined Binge On since the service debuted eight months ago. T-Mobile executives have said repeatedly that its customers watch twice as much video than they did before the service came to market.

T-Mobile has come under fire from net neutrality advocates who claim that the technical requirements to join Binge On give an unfair edge to content providers who can afford to make their offerings compliant. Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick published a paper earlier this year saying Binge On is "likely illegal" due in part to those requirements.

"Binge On allows some providers to join easily and creates lasting barriers for others, especially small players, non-commercial providers, and start-ups," she wrote. "As such, the program harms competition, user choice, free expression, and innovation."

But Legere fired back at those accusations, claiming that T-Mobile's technical requirements for Binge On aren't difficult to meet.

"Binge On is not only open and free to all services big, small and anywhere in between, we made it easy for providers to participate," Legere said in a profanity-laced video touting the new content partners. "But just to be sure, we asked them, and in a recent survey of providers 100 percent of them said that Binge On's technical requirements were straightforward and easy to comply with."

Interestingly, those technical requirements prevented YouTube from being part of Binge On at launch. The nation's largest mobile video content provider finally joined Binge On in March after making its content compliant.  

Legere also criticized Verizon's new mobile video offering, saying "we actually work with our providers. We didn't create a… proprietary or competitive service that no one asked for and, frankly, no one… cares about. I'm looking at you, Verizon and Go90."

For more:
- read this T-Mobile press release

Related articles:
T-Mobile adds YouTube, adult content and more to Binge On
Verizon follows T-Mobile's Binge On with zero-rated streaming video through Go90
Net neutrality expert to FCC: T-Mobile's Binge On is 'likely illegal'