Sprint is throttling Microsoft's Skype service, study says

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. More than 100,000 consumers have used the researchers’ Wehe smartphone app to test internet connections. Among leading US carriers, Sprint was the only one to throttle Skype, the study found. The throttling was detected in 34% 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 United States. 

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, said David Choffnes, one of the researchers.  "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," Choffnes said. "From a pure common sense competition view, it seems directly anti-competitive."