Mobile Hotspot data usage

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@tlu222 wrote:

If I use my Samsung Galaxy to create a hotspot to listen to music through Pandora on my iPad does it use more data than if I were just listening to pandora on my Samsung?  I only have an Apple connector in my car...... Thanks

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Interesting question. There might be a bit more data used since your Galaxy is acting as a router and will add the necessary routing data to each packet of data but I would expect the amount of extra data should be almost neglible.

Good to know, thank you.

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@tlu222 wrote:

If I use my Samsung Galaxy to create a hotspot to listen to music through Pandora on my iPad does it use more data than if I were just listening to pandora on my Samsung?  I only have an Apple connector in my car...... Thanks

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I'm not sure about using Android for a Mobile Hotspot, but I can assure you that if you us an iOS device as a Mobile Hotspot for a PC, it will use quite a bit more data than you might expect.  I had to do that a while back and it used about 2GB of mobile data on my iOS device to download about 400MB of data to the PC.  The PC may have downloaded other OS updates in the background, but the only obvious download was the update my wife was trying to install on her mother's laptop...

Those extra (NAT) routing bytes don't have to cross the LTE network, they are strictly local, so billed usage should be identical... the exception might be frames that are lost over WiFi, resend would be requested and resent frames would traverse between end points.

I seem to see one issue that everyone else sems to be overlooking...

Tethering service is only included for free in the Mobile Share plans, and it is included for a price in the metered Family Talk plans.  If you have a gradfathered Unlimited data plan,  the Mobile Hotspot feature is not available on that plan.