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Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 7:31 PM

Unlimited Data Plan and Personal Hotspot possible?

Hello all,

 

I have been a customer with AT&T for over 10 years now and was pretty disappointed with the conversation I just had with one of their customer service representatives. Since I first purchased an iPhone I have had the unlimited data plan for $30 that was required for purchase at the time. I recognize that since they've done away with unlimited data as an option, I have not gone over the 2GB $25 plan, but I still have opted to pay the extra for unlimited usage in case the day should come that I needed it. 

 

Today I called the customer service line to inquire about why I was not able to set up a personal hotspot (when I try, my phone tells me to contact AT&T). I was told that I would need to "upgrade" (don't get stuck on the terms) to a 2GB ($25) or 5GB ($50) monthly option in order to use this feature. Something about this seems off to me since I have been carrying forward a plan that AT&T required me to have in the first place, but now it disqualifies me from a feature of the phone - not due to capabilities, mind you.

 

Does anyone know if there is the ability to combine these two features? Really frustrated with AT&T for making it (seem hopefully) an impossibility.

 

Appreciated.

ACE - Sage

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116.4K Messages

8 years ago


@Langer9 wrote:
And honestly, I get that the "plan is for the phone, and not other devices" to all you company apologists. But, if I bought the phone outright, and pay for the most expensive plan then I refuse to just hear "sorry". I bought another router to place midway....I gave my money to netgear instead of these crooks. That's like the $40 upgrade fee I get for buying new phones and activating them myself 🙂

How you purchase your phone has nothing to do with service provided.  

 

If you have home wifi, you probably don't need an unlimited data plan.  

And you complain about cost?   

I have 6 phones and 2 tablets and my bill is $240 before, $268 after tax. All my phones were full price purchase to keep the line fees at $15.  (And pay no upgrade fee)  And we share 30 GBs of data with roll over.  I can tether with my phones or tablets.  We have never exceeded 22 GBs in a month. 

Its not ATT's fault you're on the wrong plan for your needs, can't tether and pay too much.   

 

Gee, lets list all the services old plans don't get that current tiered plans included at no extra cost

Unlimited talk and text.

free roaming in Mexico and Canada with 1 GBs of data

free text internationally

and use of hotspot.

 

Im sure there are other advantages I didn't think of.

(FYI, I don't buy my phones from ATT, they charge a premium price)

 

 

 

Voyager

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3 Messages

8 years ago

How you purchase your phone has nothing to do with service provided.

If you have home wifi, you probably don't need an unlimited data plan.
And you complain about cost?
I have 6 phones and 2 tablets and my bill is $240 before, $268 after tax. All my phones were full price purchase to keep the line fees at $15. (And pay no upgrade fee) And we share 30 GBs of data with roll over. I can tether with my phones or tablets. We have never exceeded 22 GBs in a month.
Its not ATT's fault you're on the wrong plan for your needs, can't tether and pay too much.

Gee, lets list all the services old plans don't get that current tiered plans included at no extra cost
Unlimited talk and text.
free roaming in Mexico and Canada with 1 GBs of data
free text internationally
and use of hotspot.

Im sure there are other advantages I didn't think of.
(FYI, I don't buy my phones from ATT, they charge a premium price)



"Honest answers are not always the ones we want to hear. Please mark solutions, it may help others." |||||||


LOL. You're completely missing the point, again. BTW I'm pretty sure you're an employee of AT&T anyway. But, my plan isn't the issue, yo. It's the fact the I pay for an unlimited service that technically isn't unlimited. It's limited to the device. So, don't tell me I'm getting unlimited data, but then that I can't choose use that same data on my xbox.
The wifi isn't any issue either, lol. Same deal, I pay a ridiculous amount and I can use as much as I want, but since Id rather choose to split data that is already paid for, then why wouldn't I want that.


"Sometimes you think you're giving an honest answer, but you're really just dumb"
lllllllllll

ACE - Sage

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116.4K Messages

8 years ago

For the 1,000,000th  time - employees are required to identify themselves in 2 places in every post.  I also don't get a discount for posting here.  

 

Since the unlimited smartphone data is a concept some can't grasp, I will go with the buffet analogy:

 

All you can eat buffet:  You pay for your plate and you can't share plates, no doggy bags, and the prime rib and chocolate cake is gone - it's gone until tomorrow's buffet.

 

 

Employee

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3.5K Messages

8 years ago

I love it when everyone throws around the company apologist line. The tag at the bottom of my posts indicate my statements and posts are clearly my opinion and not representative of the company. I'm a customer as well.

 

Everyone has the right to their opinion and claiming that tethering is an entitlement is just that, an opinion. You cannot ignore the most important factor when it comes to mobile hotspot and that is point of demarcation.

 

You may think the phone distributing the data makes it act like a router and other devices connected to it are in essence similar to a device on a home network but it doesn't work that way. The termination point (demarc) is the device being shared with. It adds another seat to the table.

 

No one is being forced into anything. If you don't like the policy, you have the choice to go with a provider that fits your needs. If another carrier offers tethering on unlimited then go with what works for you. This is why choice exists in the wireless industry.

Master

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3.5K Messages

8 years ago


@lizdance40 wrote:


How you purchase your phone has nothing to do with service provided.  

 

Gee, lets list all the services old plans don't get that current tiered plans included at no extra cost

Unlimited talk and text.

free roaming in Mexico and Canada with 1 GBs of data

free text internationally

and use of hotspot.

 

Im sure there are other advantages I didn't think of.

(FYI, I don't buy my phones from ATT, they charge a premium price)

 

 

 


I was looking around for more discussion about the services issue, and found this thread.

The statement that how you buy your phones has nothing to do with your services provided is pretty false, unless you're only talking about *basic* services.

If you buy a branded phone that supports VoLTE (HD Voice, call it whatever), WiFi Calling, etc, these features work just fine.

If you buy the *exact same* unbranded phone, you will (likely) NOT recieve these same services, except in certain cases (i.e. iPhone and a couple of others).  Even AT&T will tell you this, if you call their CS agents.  I can provide more specific examples if you want, but the Lumia 950 phone is a good one, for starters.

 

I also don't buy them from AT&T, for the same reason, and continue to be frustrated by the lack of service offerings by an unbranded phone.  I fully admit however, that this is a national (pretty much US only) problem, NOT an AT&T only problem, unfortunately.

I can use my phone in the EU, and get all my features without issue, and without any excuses, or having to buy them from a specific carier with a custom ROM...

 

I agree that tetherhing-wise, there are carriers that people can choose that offer unlimited (and some decent amount of tethered data, >10GB), for this there is carrier-choice...

 

Oh yeah, I've been with AT&T for 20 years now, except for a brief 3-week hiatus, to another carrier with better international data, but a serious lack of "actual" coverage...

In this regard, AT&T is pretty good, they cover a lot of WA state, probalby only second to the V carrier.

ACE - Sage

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116.4K Messages

8 years ago

@pgrey

 

Langer9 seemed to imply that because he bought his phone outright, he was entitled to more service or some other perk.  My reply "how he buys his phone has nothing to do with service provide" is true.  Service is priced separately from phones and is not effected by how you buy a phone.  

What phone you purchase does effect service received.  

Whether or not the phone is capable of receiving all of ATT service is the price we pay for a non carrier phone.  

 

 

Employee

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3.5K Messages

8 years ago

This is the thing about VOLTE. It's a luxury item. It's not necessary for a phone to operate. So VOLTE being exclusive to branded phones is totally fine just like how Gears of War is exclusive to Xbox or iMessage is an Apple exclusive feature. The FCC isn't going to police these kinds of features because it's a complete overreach for them to dictate anything beyond basic functionality.

 

Master

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3.5K Messages

8 years ago

Can you explain more?
Say for example on WiFi calling, it's more or less a simple 3GPP handshare, key-exchange, and then an IPSec tunnel for the data (voice in this case) to use.

 

Other VOIP solutions, such as Skype, Google Voice, etc, all pretty much do the same thing, there's nothing really magical about VoLTE or WiFi Calling in these cases.

 

I get that AT&T wants to sell phones, and to use those premium "features" as a carrot, but I wish if AT&T isn't going to offer a phone (like the 950XL I use for continuum work), then it would be nice if they would enable these on the SIM protocol so we could use them too.

I feel odd about being penalized, because I need a phone for work projects, one that wholy supports these features, but yet isn't "enabled" because I didn't pay the markup, or couldn't buy it, in this case (950 is sold by AT&T XL is not, same chipsets, etc).

 

I'm not saying things are right/wrong, but the customer is sort of caught-in-the-middle.  In the EU, you pay a lot for phones (like here now, almost across-the-board), but all these features are available on almost all the carriers, kind of makes you go hmm....

 

Ultimately, I'll probably have to get either a Verizon, T-Mobile, or other secondary AT&T phone that supports WiFi calling (the Verizon and T-Mobile options are MUCH cheaper), so that I can stay in touch most winter weekends (we have WiFi, but no AT&T signal).

I did try setting up a forward from my AT&T cell number, to a VOIP service (which then runs on my 950XL), in another attempt to solve it for this location, but it's not exaclty reliable, not yet anyway...

 

Throw us a bone, maybe, those of us here for 20+ years, through the Cingular transition and back, seems reasonable to me?

 

Master

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3.5K Messages

8 years ago

I think there's some interesting confusion around this (or maybe I'm confused, but I've worked around chipsets and various other hardware and device-drivers most of my career, so I have some reasonable insight here).

 

If you buy a 640 from the Microsoft store, it's the same *exact* 640, except that it has a slightly different firmware.

Similarly, an unlockec iPhone vs a branded one support the same features, because they too are the exact same hardware (apple, being singular and closed, has done a better job of working with carriers on these standards).

Portions of this firmware are accessible to the provider, to enable certain services, esentially rendering this phone no different from the other one.  Ultimately, it might have a slightly different revision in it's part#, but realistically, it's the same piece of hardware.

I'm open to documentation that proves otherwise, and I can find/post links that show the differences in the firmware, if the reference is interesting.

I still maintain, services are priced/available according to the phone purchased, that part's a pretty simple fact, despite the hardware being the same, unlocked or not.

 

If this were not the case, then you couldn't use your unlocked phone in the EU, with ALL the features, such as VoLTE, WiFi calling, etc...

 

What I really hope is that some of the manufacturers (MS in my case) get a bit more solid with the consortiums, and sort out simpler "standards.

 

Employee

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3.5K Messages

8 years ago

And that's the thing. VOLTE and WiFi calling do work on unlocked iPhones. Now WiFi calling isn't even available for Android yet, branded or not. 

 

I'd say updates is the priority right now. Getting Marshmallow out on the phones missing it

 

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