Sprint Is Throttling Microsoft's Skype Service, Study Finds

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Sprint has been slowing traffic to Microsoft's internet-based video chat service Skype, according to new findings from an ongoing study by Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts. Among leading U.S. carriers, Sprint was the only one to throttle Skype, the study found. The throttling was detected in 34 percent of 1,968 full tests -- defined as those in which a user ran two tests in a row -- conducted between Jan. 18 and Oct. 15. It happened regularly, and was spread geographically across the U.S. Android phone users were more affected than owners of Apple Inc.'s iPhones. The finding is particularly troubling because Skype relies on Sprint's wireless internet network, but the app also provides a communication tool that competes with Sprint's calling services, the researcher added. 'If you are a telephony provider and you provide IP services over that network, then you shouldn't be able to limit the service offered by another telephony provider that runs over the internet,' David Choffnes, one of the researchers who developed the app used to conduct the survey, said. 'From a pure common sense competition view, it seems directly anti-competitive.'

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