Dial This Number to Turn Off T-Mobile’s BingeOn

Credit where credit is due: T-Mobile just fixed one of the biggest problems with BingeOn, the company's "zero-rating" service that lets users watch certain streaming video services, including Netflix and Hulu, without cutting into their data plan.

The wireless carrier said Thursday morning that customers will no longer have to dive into their account settings on the T-Mobile website to turn BingeOn on and off. Instead, customers can merely use their smartphone to dial #BOF# (#263#) to turn the feature off and #BON# (#266#) to turn it on. This matters because it dramatically reduces the friction that previously slowed down the process of enabling and disabling the service: Who wants to visit a website and type in your password (if you even remember it) just to disable something you may never have wanted turned on in the first place?

T-Mobile CEO John Legere announced the fix in the middle of a series of celebratory tweets saying how great BingeOn is:

#BingeOn is our most disruptive move yet… and we're just getting started! #wewontstop #uncarrier
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) January 28, 2016

T-Mobile on Thursday also added a few more streaming video services to BingeOn, including Amazon Video and WWE Network. YouTube is still not covered by the service, if you're wondering.

Of course, while I'm personally thrilled to now have the option to watch WWE Network on my commute without having it eat into my data plan (albeit only at the DVD-quality resolution of 480p), I can still recognize why zero-rating services like BingeOn are so controversial: it's all well and good to be able to watch House of Cards, The Man in the High Castle, and WWE NXT without worrying about my data plan, but what about the countless other video services out there that aren't covered by the service? I can watch WWE just fine, but what about other promotions like Ring of Honor or New Japan? Why bother seeking out alternatives when it's so, so easy to consume what's served up on a silver platter?

Extrapolate this to, you know, stuff other than pro-wrestling—such as a media streaming startup like Plex—and you can understand why zero-rating still so difficult to stomach for net neutrality advocates.