Unlimited Data plan and Mobile Hotspot?

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@Busternutt wrote:

@Lonelygirl, because the unlimited plan is for one device, not as many devices as you can tether. If another company has a different policy, why should ATT follow suit? If all carriers were alike, we would only need one.

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@BusternuttWhy not just restrict the tether to a single connection then?  Just playing devil's advocate here, but this is a fairly easy change, and would keep with the spirit of the "single device" usage.

I agree that there should be a top-end limit to high-speed tethering, like other carriers, it's only practical that people aren't using it as home internet.

Yeah, I know a few people would figure out how to re-distribute their tethered connection, and make it appear as a single device, but those people are also likely to figure out how to work around the whole tethering issue, completely. 

I'm not a candidate for unlimited, BTW, although I used to have the really old unlimited, before they required bundled for unlimited.  I knew a LOT of people who were tethering back then, on this plan, before more algorithms were implemented to watch for this.

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@pgrey wrote:

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@Busternutt wrote:

@Lonelygirl, because the unlimited plan is for one device, not as many devices as you can tether. If another company has a different policy, why should ATT follow suit? If all carriers were alike, we would only need one.

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@BusternuttWhy not just restrict the tether to a single connection then?  Just playing devil's advocate here, but this is a fairly easy change, and would keep with the spirit of the "single device" usage.

I agree that there should be a top-end limit to high-speed tethering, like other carriers, it's only practical that people aren't using it as home internet.

Yeah, I know a few people would figure out how to re-distribute their tethered connection, and make it appear as a single device, but those people are also likely to figure out how to work around the whole tethering issue, completely. 

I'm not a candidate for unlimited, BTW, although I used to have the really old unlimited, before they required bundled for unlimited.  I knew a LOT of people who were tethering back then, on this plan, before more algorithms were implemented to watch for this.

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The problem is, and ATT knows well, that it doesn't stop with limited high speed tethering.  T-mobile just went on a rampage over the abuse of there limited tethering policy.  Opening the door a crack, just allowed the skilled to open it all the way and cheat the system.  Verizon hasn't limited and has some users with the paid tethering option that use hundreds of GBs a month

@pgrey, wouldn't matter. Just like people complain about (limited) roll over when ATT gave it to them, somebody woud still complain that they want to tether two devices, then three, so on and so forth.

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@Busternutt wrote:

@pgrey, wouldn't matter. Just like people complain about (limited) roll over when ATT gave it to them, somebody woud still complain that they want to tether two devices, then three, so on and so forth.

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@BusternuttI suppose, although they sure complain when the realize they can't tether at all, probably just sign up for the plan assuming they can ;-]

I agree, you can't make all the people happy, all the time, but maybe this would be a fair compromise, still follow the "once device" use policy, and make more of the people happy, most of the time?

@lizdance40 Yeah, people that are going to abuse this probably already are.  There are ways to hack things, and clever ways to conceal it, but you're talking about a really, really small number of people.  This subset is unlikely to be affected by any policy change.

What will happen when we get to cat10 or 12, or WiMax, or whatever tech AT&T decides to move to, and we're pushing 500+mbps?

I'm just guessing here, but is you can chew through a fairly sizeable MSV plan, in a few minutes, something will have to change here.  I'm sure there's a LOT of discussion about this already in-play ;-]

@pgrey. 

Lets not go there yet.  The jump from 3G to LTE was enough of a shock for some customers.  

@lizdance40Too late, the rest of the world is going there, fast, literally and figuratively ;-]

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@MR_SMiT wrote:
@pgrey: In USA mostly on DSL or Cable see 500meg internet.😉

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Yeah, well, right now mostly you have to get Fiber to get that kind of speed here (I don't have 500, and where I live I can only get maybe 150-200, if I wanted to pay for it).

In this frame of reference though, I was talking about upcoming wireless/cell standards, which is why @lizdance40 got concerned that I was really going to confuse/stir up the natives ;-]

Right now, there are very few use-cases for 500 or 1GB, realistically, for an end-user.  Not saying they don't exist, but I think mostly gigabit is a marketing tool, given the other bottlenecks, and data limitations anyway.

My point was that the upcoming standards will allow a user to stream or whatever, right through the current plans that have tethering enabled, in a manner of minutes, so eventually it would seem somthing will need to change.

I'm a bleeding-edge kind of guy, always have been, often gets me in trouble, but I wouldn't have it any other way, for most stuff ;-]

@pgrey. 

Most of the natives can understand why they use more data on their phones.  I'm thinking the prices will go down as ability to use goes up.  It's the few that don't get it that give me the yips.

What is the FCC going to do? They can't force a carrier to implement a feature if they don't want to. The unlimited data terms are clear, no tethering is allowed. It's for the device only.

You're getting unlimited data.....on the device it's intended for.

Sharing that data with a computer, tablet or something else is not. It's adding a second device to the AT&T network and that is a violation of the unlimited data terms and conditions.

It's not an unfair business practice because the terms of the plan are available to everyone before they get on the plan. If you don't like the terms, you can vote with your wallet and find a provider that fits your needs. The FCC, FTC, whoever isn't going to be a nanny or police these arbitrary things. They have no right to tell a private network owner how to do business. Especially because you can just go with another carrier. Cellular is not a utility. There are no local monopolies.