“AT&T has started to issue warnings to customers unofficially tethering their smartphones to its network,” Andrew Munchbach reports for BGR.
“In an email to unauthorized tetherers, the company writes, ‘Our records show that you use this capability, but are not subscribed to our tethering plan.’ The correspondence goes on to note that users will be automatically enrolled in the $45 per month ‘DataPro for Smartphone Tethering’ plan if they ignore the warning,” Munchbach reports. “‘The new plan – whether you sign up on your own or we automatically enroll you – will replace your current smartphone data plan, including if you are on an unlimited data plan,’ the email continues”
Munchbach reports, “The standard DataPro offering is $25 per month and provides users with 2GB of monthly data, although some users are still clinging to a discontinued, $30 per month 5GB data plan. It is safe to assume that a large portion of the unofficial, tethering populous is jailbroken iPhone users and rooted Android users. ‘If you discontinue tethering, no changes to your current plan will be required.’
The full article, which includes a copy of AT&T’s email, here.
MacDailyNews Take: You already pay for the data, but you can’t use it in certain ways unless you pay AT&T for it again. We don’t know what to tell you except to contact your congressperson and hope that one of their large campaign contributors isn’t AT&T (or any telecom company). Good luck with that.
MiWi users: Be careful out there.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
It is absurd that the provider is allowed to dictate how I use my data.
Apple should have told the greedy AT&T bastards to F-OFF when it came to letting the provider decide if I can tether my data. They have no right whatsoever to tell me I can’t use the data to feed other devices. Its blatantly wrong that this is allowed.
Lucky for me my provider unlocks tethering for free but I still strongly resent the fact that I had to contact them to unlock it.
Do you know what tethering means?
No body is dictating how you use your data. And nobody is telling you that you can’t use your data to feed other devices.
But if you want to use somebody’s service to move it around, they have every right to dictate how, when, where and how much.
Hey, get over it! The service belongs to AT&T, not to you. I used to pay Verizon $60 a month for a USB modem. Now I pay AT&T $20 for tethering. I’m saving $40 a month. Thank you AT&T! Sure, free is nice. But AT&T is a corporate business, and they need to do what’s best for their shareholders. I would not second guess them.
So, do you work for AT&T?
Anyway, how do you feel about capping my home use without permission nor a new contract after being a DSL customer for a decade? How do you feel about their next step, and that is throttling all netflix traffic to a crawl, and then offering their own streaming video service that is not throttled, but costs a bit more?