vB Easy Archive - is tethering free?

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is tethering free?
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Posted by: locurafan

I know you can't do this with the iPhone but if you have a phone that has bluetooth, is it free? I'm new to this

Posted by: amkls704

Quote:

Originally Posted by locurafan

I know you can't do this with the iPhone but if you have a phone that has bluetooth, is it free? I'm new to this

No. You are "supposed" to have a tethering plan. I think with BBs it's 60/month with your unlimited data. I have an n95 and can tether on it with a 15$ mediaNET unlimited plan. Am I supposed to? No. Can I? yes.

So in short, you can tether on lower plans, but I would highly recommend having some kind of unlimited data plan if you plan on tethering.

And this thread should probably be in the AT&T forum, not in the Apple forum.

Posted by: RogerPodacter

i've tethered for free with my 15 dollar plan for 2 years now with zero problems. but yes, as said above, technically you are supposed to use a tethering plan. however ATT has been very lax with tethering in the last few years. as long as you dont stream or download DVDs or bitorrent, then you should be safe. of course hopefully someone writes an app for the iphone to tether eventually...

Posted by: locurafan

so basically I shouldn't tell them what I'm doing? lol

would I just turn on the bluetooth on the phone and let my MacBook search for it? Would it charge me?

You guys are already answering me on here so I'm not gonna post it on the AT&T forum *cough*

Posted by: RogerPodacter

no dont call ATT and tell them lmao. when i tether with my nokia, its beyond easy. my laptop has bluetooth always on. so i just turn on my BT on the phone, then press my shortcut on the desktop of my laptop. i'm connected in about 10 seconds over 3g.

i dont know about macbook. but on a PC you have to create the connection in network places. of course you have to pair your laptop to phone first. then the settings are:

dial into: *99#
login: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
pass: CINGULAR1

make sure those CAPS are on.

Posted by: NINJA SHERMAN

ISPDA@CINGULARGPRS.COM works well for me.

Posted by: RogerPodacter

lol isnt that the exact login to use if you wanna get caught on a non-tethering plan? i always heard that use WAP rather than ISP otherwise you could rack up a nice bill...

Posted by: amkls704

Quote:

Originally Posted by RogerPodacter

no dont call ATT and tell them lmao. when i tether with my nokia, its beyond easy. my laptop has bluetooth always on. so i just turn on my BT on the phone, then press my shortcut on the desktop of my laptop. i'm connected in about 10 seconds over 3g.

i dont know about macbook. but on a PC you have to create the connection in network places. of course you have to pair your laptop to phone first. then the settings are:

dial into: *99#
login: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
pass: CINGULAR1

make sure those CAPS are on.

Interesting. Guess I'll use this instead of the other one that someone named. I don't really tether that often though.

Posted by: flyingdutchman

Or you could not steal from AT&T and just pay for the service you want. Just an idea.

Posted by: wot_fan

Quote:

Originally Posted by flyingdutchman

Or you could not steal from AT&T and just pay for the service you want. Just an idea.

You obviously don't understand most Ho-Fo members. I have learned from threads here that it is OK to steal from AT&T or Apple since they are evil money grubbing companies

Posted by: amkls704

Quote:

Originally Posted by flyingdutchman

Or you could not steal from AT&T and just pay for the service you want. Just an idea.

Here's the thing - I think the whole idea behind the tethering plans is for business users who are constantly tethering. If you only tether once or twice a month or when you are out of town, should you really have to pay 60$ a month for that service? Probably not. I think that's why AT&T is pretty lax about people tethering on lesser plans. If you have a ton of data showing up, then yes, they'd probably have an issue, but people like for instance, me, who only tethers when I'm either out of town to check e-mail forums etc when I don't want to use my phone to do it, I'm using a very miniscule amount of data. Tethering plans mostly are meant for people who are downloading mass amounts of data in a month to their PC. Like business users.

Posted by: CocheseUGA

It's not what you think you should be able to do, it's what they tell you that you can do.

One day the hammer will come down, and I'll be waiting to read the 'I just got a $1000 bill' threads.

Posted by: gta672

As long as you don't use HUGE amounts of data, at&t doesn't care.

Posted by: locurafan

Quote:

Originally Posted by wot_fan

You obviously don't understand most Ho-Fo members. I have learned from threads here that it is OK to steal from AT&T or Apple since they are evil money grubbing companies

it's funny cuz it's true

there's no way I'm gonna be paying $60 a month for something I'll only be using at least 5 times a year (I don't go out of town that much)

thanks for all the help you guys!

Posted by: amkls704

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N95-4: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 NokiaN95_8GB-3/20.2.005 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413)

Quote:

Originally Posted by CocheseUGA

It's not what you think you should be able to do, it's what they tell you that you can do.

One day the hammer will come down, and I'll be waiting to read the 'I just got a $1000 bill' threads.

and i'll be laughing until then because it won't happen. If you are tethering all the time then you may get caught eventually but for most of us it doesn't happen often so there's really no point in getting the plan. I'll just use my wifi. Thats what i pay comcast for right? Like i said i use it to check stuff when i'm out of town and that's it. It would be silly for me to pay 60 a month for something i don't use more than 2 times a year.

Posted by: flyingdutchman

Why not a WiFi hotspot is all I am saying. Heck, Starbucks is giving WiFi away now. Free, ethical WiFi on every corner, imagine that!

Posted by: coolcellmunda

Quote:

Originally Posted by amkls704

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N95-4: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 NokiaN95_8GB-3/20.2.005 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413)

and i'll be laughing until then because it won't happen. If you are tethering all the time then you may get caught eventually but for most of us it doesn't happen often so there's really no point in getting the plan. I'll just use my wifi. Thats what i pay comcast for right? Like i said i use it to check stuff when i'm out of town and that's it. It would be silly for me to pay 60 a month for something i don't use more than 2 times a year.

wow it is amazing how u posted this whole post from nokia 95 T9 keypad
hats off to you dude i will never be able to do that

Posted by: Aiku1337

Quote:

Originally Posted by flyingdutchman

Why not a WiFi hotspot is all I am saying. Heck, Starbucks is giving WiFi away now. Free, ethical WiFi on every corner, imagine that!

What's the difference whether you're tethering an iPhone to your laptop versus doing whatever you needed to do on the iPhone? You're paying for unlimited data. How is it unethical?

The only thing I can think of, which is just a guess, is that maybe the laptop is able to process data faster, meaning the rate at which you consume data would be higher than just on the iPhone's browser. That seemed to be the case when I did it (one or two times) on my Blackjack. But then again maybe the iPhone's CPU is beefy enough that it isn't the bottleneck. In that case, what would be the difference? You wouldn't be "stealing" since you'd be using the same amount of bandwidth.

Really, I think AT&T is just using this as an excuse to charge business users more money. Because they know people on the road need their data, and need it immediately. Therefore they will be tethering. And to a business, $60 a month is peanuts if it means their employees can be more productive on the road. For normal users that happen to be away from free WiFi and want to check a website that requires flash to run, this isn't hurting AT&T in the least.

Posted by: amkls704

Quote:

Originally Posted by coolcellmunda

wow it is amazing how u posted this whole post from nokia 95 T9 keypad
hats off to you dude i will never be able to do that

LOL! Thanks! What's even more ridiculous is I can type quicker on my n95 than I could on my blackberry curve, which really doesn't make any sense at all.

I think I was just so used to t9 for all those years that I just had flip or slider phones that it stuck. The iPhone's keyboard drove me nuts, and the BB curve was better, but still I didn't really care for it. Apparently me and t9 are just meant to be....

Oh and I almost forgot, I'm a girl by the way. No dude here.

lol

Posted by: flyingdutchman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aiku1337

You hit the nail on the head. If you could do everything you wanted on the iPhone, why tether? Because you probably want faster access to more sites that will fully work. That eats more bandwidth. I am just saying there are better, and honestly easier, ways to get a data connection on a laptop without stealing, which is what you are doing.

I always love the 'this won't hurt giant company xyz therefore it's ok' argument. Not saying that AT&T isn't gouging because I honestly don't know whether they are or not. However, if I deem a price too high, I shop for an alternative. Not steal.

Posted by: KDarling

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aiku1337

The only thing I can think of, which is just a guess, is that maybe the laptop is able to process data faster, meaning the rate at which you consume data would be higher than just on the iPhone's browser.

Yep, that's the idea.

Quote:

That seemed to be the case when I did it (one or two times) on my Blackjack. But then again maybe the iPhone's CPU is beefy enough that it isn't the bottleneck.

The iPhone has pretty much the same CPU used in all smartphones, clocked faster than some and slower than others.

I think you're right in that it's partly a legacy thing, from back when laptops really could consume lots more data than a handheld could.

Also, carriers do some of their planning for expensive system upgrades depending on how many fast/slow devices they know are out there on contract. If it's all phones, not as much work has to be done.

Posted by: Aiku1337

Quote:

Originally Posted by flyingdutchman

So if a user had typed out an e-mail previously while offline, tethered to the phone, sent it out and disconnected, do you still consider that theft? I would guess that in that instance you would be ok with that since the same amount of data/bandwidth would be consumed.

I had a nokia phone a few years ago. I was in Salt Lake City trying to find out some information via my phone. It had internet capability so I figured I was set. I try to load the page and it simply did not render on the phone. I'm not talking about fancy and bandwidth hungry flash. I'm talking about actually downloading all of the data but the phone could not render it for whatever reason. I tethered to my laptop in order to display the page and get the information I needed. Is that also theft?

I'm posing two different scenarios to try to make a point. You don't know what people are doing while tethering. I would guess that people are just making quick checks, and not FTPing multi-gigabyte files.

I would think from a business perspective AT&T put these limitations in place just to cover themselves. For one it means they don't have to support tethering, that lowers the number of calls to customer service and lowers the amount of more expensive technical employees. If somehow you figure out how to tether it's probably OK until they notice your usage. With the rule in place they can make you stop by charging you a lot of money. However these one off situations isn't hurting them any. Sure, by the letter of their rules its theft. But IMO in spirit it's really a grey area.

Posted by: amkls704

Quote:

Originally Posted by flyingdutchman

Since when did this thread turn into an ethical issue of whether it's stealing or not? The OP simply wanted to know if tethering was free. The question was answered. No it's not, but you DO have the capability to tether on lesser plans. Whatever a user decides to do with that is up to them. I really doubt "your" opinion is going to sway anyone. So drop it and agree to disagree.