I have no compunction in getting tethering for free, either from wired Play Store apps, or the root-only hotspot apps. You are simply circumventing a system that charges you twice for the same service. It’s no different than sending an IM instead of an expensive SMS.
Tethering charges are nothing more than a naked cash grab. And phone companies wonder why they're hated...
5 gig is 5 gig, regardless of the device consuming it.
I don't really get the outrage. Is there some moral or legal obligation that a service's price must tie directly to its immediate costs?
Netflix charges me the same monthly fee whether I use it or not, is that fair? After all, on their end they only pay license holders per-stream (AFAIK).
> Is there some moral or legal obligation that a service's price must tie directly to its immediate costs?
Yes. Verizon and other wireless telecoms have built their businesses on the back of a limited, public resource (namely, wireless spectrum) leased from the government (and therefore the people) of the United States. Therefore, they have a moral (should also be legal, but isn't at the moment) responsibility to act in an ethical manner.
If this were a market without such barriers to entry, I would say that they're free to do whatever they want, because competitors would enter the market and force them to change their policies. But when it comes to wireless telecoms, it's not possible for such competitors to materialize.
What is unethical about segmenting customers based on the devices they use? Would it be better to do away with all forms of "unlimited" plans and just charge per MB?
Unlimited plans have already been done away with by everyone except Sprint. What's at issue here is them charging extra for data bought by the byte.
I believe that you should be able to purchase data and share it amongst as many devices as you want (a small activation fee per cellular device may be acceptable, but nothing of the sort should exist for tethering, since there is no perceptible difference for the carriers) . This is how it works for wired internet, and I don't see why wireless should be any different (with the exception of any wireless specific network management, but that's not at issue here).
Well Verizon will also charge you regardless of whether or not you actually use all of your allotted data. The difference here is that they'd also like to charge you a second time to let you use your allotted data in different ways.
This is just how they decided to segment the market. Would it be less offensive if they let you use whatever devices you want, but charged per MB because that kinda sorta mirrors their costs better? Why does that matter?
You aren't paying twice for the same thing because the normal data plan explicitly didn't allow tethering.
Hypothetical: Let say the local water company has a flat rate of $30 a month as long as you do not use more then 50 liters of water and then a reasonable rate for every liter after that.
However there is an additional fee if you want to use that water to water you lawn, it costs an extra $30 a month to have the water directed to the lawn.
However when industrious home owners decides to water their lawn by hand from sink water and avoid the extra $30 dollars a month the water company cuts their service.
Do you have a problem with the water company segmenting their market in this fashion?
I don't think that's a good idea (seems like it would be awfully hard to implement), but I don't think it's immoral or unethical.
Adobe Photoshop is available to college students at a deep discount. Hobbyists who are not in school have to pay more for the exact same product. That's a little uncool, but is it unethical?
>You aren't paying twice for the same thing because the normal data plan explicitly didn't allow tethering.
Which is a completely artificial and needless distinction. The phones have the necessary hardware and software and have for years. And that's where the outrage comes from - there is no difference between 5gb transferred over a tethered device and 5gb transferred over the device natively.
They're double dipping. Adding no value and expecting more money for it. And everyone knows it.
This might even be remotely acceptable if the wireless marketplace were in the least bit open. It is not. I can't possibly be the only person to notice that the major carriers plans are almost mirror images of each other.
>Is there some moral or legal obligation that a service's price must tie directly to its immediate costs?
No, but in a competitive market we would expect it to because competitors will lower their prices in line with their costs to stay in business. At least, that's the theory.
When you have companies competing on who can charge the most you have an indication that there is a lack of real competition.
No, the moral and jurisdictional obligation is for a service to avoid sticking their nose into unrelated business to extract more value. Gas stations don't demand a percentage of your salary for using their gas to drive to work. Communications has long had the concept of a demarcation point, it's unfortunate that we've got to be hassled while the carriers avoid rediscovering it.
Note that Karl Bode of DSLReports.com speculates that the tethering decision may mainly be cover for a less-watched pro-Verizon decision coming down the road:
In other words, the FCC took action and finally enforced 2008 rules when they knew Verizon was already changing their ways -- without FCC involvement. Meanwhile, the FCC is rumored to be ready to sign off on Verizon's marketing relationship with the cable industry, despite the serious anti-competitive and coverage issues that deal raises. This tethering ruling could be a way to pretend to appear "pro consumery" before approving the Verizon cable deal.
The FCC: even when they do something superficially populist, on the big things they're in the incumbents' pockets.
I am one of the "lucky" customers who has been able to hold on to my unlimited plan. So, I'm naturally annoyed that I don't get tethering now.
"It is not clear that Verizon can differentiate between limited and unlimited plans through this interface — it might just look for a tethering plan flag. This could mean a free for all with unlimited users, tethering as they please."
I'm not sure if they're being extremely optimistic here, or I simply don't understand what the author is saying. Free for all with unlimited users? There might be some sort of technical problem to solve to prevent unlimited users from tethering, but my guess is that Verizon will do whatever it takes to force us to pay, if they can.
I've got unlimited data on Verizon as well. I installed Jelly Bean on my Galaxy Nexus a few weeks back and am enjoying free, built-in tethering (it even does WPA2 correctly, the only thing that was missing in previous implementations). I just make sure I don't abuse it so much that Verizon cottons on to what I'm up to. For example, I've got geofences set up to switch to wifi whenever possible, to reduce data usage.
I used it fairly heavily for a while during a move and didn't have any trouble. I'm pretty sure Verizon either can't/doesn't tell, or just doesn't care because relatively few people do that.
I use AT&T for my iPhone but have the unlimited plan in which tethering isn't allowed. Would this FCC mandate force AT&T to remove the tethering plan as Verizon did?
T-mobile just started routing my tethered access to an upsell page today - have been tethering with my phone for years. From what i was reading, the ruling only applies to "c-block" spectrum - i.e tmobile, sprint, at&t aren't affected by the ruling.
I'm more than annoyed, and will probably be either switching carriers or just getting a separate wimax device soon.
My plan is arguably a grey area - it's "unlimited", but only the first 5 gigs are at full speed.
There are a lot of good arguments for and against a telco's responsibility to the customer — as well as if this may or may not create a more competitive market.
What I fail to understand is why "data" has become the new golden ticket? In the past, when voice was all anyone cared about, we had a relatively competitive market. Features such as rollover minutes, family plans, and much more were offered.
For example, I have a 300 minute plan, but have maxed out at 5000 minutes now because I simply don't talk on the phone ( Rollover ). Maybe in the past, this was different and cost them more to send data across the wire — but now it is the same, voice data and "data" data moves across the same pipes as far as I know.
If the telco's had to be competitive when it was voice only and data was a luxury — and if data and voice are no different — why are the telco's having such a hard time with this?
If a plan has 300 minutes of talk time, how about I get 300MB of data time. If I don't use it all, then give me rollover data just like they do with voice.
These telco's basically have one competitor, that being the cable company. From what I understand, DSL had new subscriber counts that were so low I was shocked — something like a few thousand new accounts in total.
If they want to compete with cable, right now, they can't, but as soon as their speeds come in-line with cable, they have the potential to be your phone and internet. And unlike cable, who only sends out one bill, the telco gets to send out a bill to every single person. Now, everyone has their own Internet connection and is paying for it.
From what I understand, telco's are paying pennies per GB on this data from their upstream. Places like Netflix drop the data as close to their doorstep as possible, at which point, there is zero bandwidth cost for the ISP to shuffle those bits around to users. If I use all of my 500GB a month, that costs the cable co. well under a dollar in upstream fees. Yes, they have overheads with their equipment and business operations, but that can't possibly amount to the overage fee's they charge, let alone the fact it costs me $70.00 a month or more for a decent Internet connection.
They are going to over-charge themselves out of the game. As soon as wifi is ubiquitous and phones learn how to jump from one AP to another, things will get interesting. If I were closer, there is an ISP called Sonic that is bringing 1 Gbps symmetric Fiber to people's homes for a very reasonable fee, around $50.00 a month I believe.
Look at AT&T and SMS messages. Apple releases iMessage, making there no need for SMS for iPhone to iPhone users. But I still have to keep SMS running for those people who don't have an iPhone. Apple could solve a lot of this by opening up iMessage so others can use the protocol — which I believe Steve Jobs said was supposed to happen. If Android could talk to iPhone over iMessages, it would wake up the telco's very quick. The only remaining need would be the tweekers and their pay as you go phones, and banks, credit cards, and other pure txt services that send alerts. Though they could simply put in an iMessage gateway — but I have a feeling that would take years for them to implement.
I have no compunction in getting tethering for free, either from wired Play Store apps, or the root-only hotspot apps. You are simply circumventing a system that charges you twice for the same service. It’s no different than sending an IM instead of an expensive SMS.
Tethering charges are nothing more than a naked cash grab. And phone companies wonder why they're hated...
5 gig is 5 gig, regardless of the device consuming it.