Tethering - Here's why I wouldn't do it...

[mikehal38]

Prior to reading this thread I looked at the Verizon Website and noticed that for $30.00 a month you could have phone tethering added to your bill.

I went to the Verizon store and asked them to add it to my plan and they saw me holding my Moto Droid and said it was not available for that device at this time. He then said there are third party apps that have that capability, but they(Verizon) did not offer anything like that.

Wanting more info I called *611 when I got home and spoke with a rep in the tech service section. I asked him about tethering and he said it is not offered right now with the Moto Droid and may be in the future. He said it could be tomorrow or could be 6 months, who knows.

I then asked him about a thrid party app in the market allowing the tethering for my laptop. He said that would be fine. He said if I have the unlimited plan then its my choice what I use it for.

I asked him about whether or not I would get into trouble and he said he has never heard of anything like that before. He said it was obvious I wanted to pay for something and wanted to sell me something, but it just isnt something available right now.

I asked him several times if I would get into any kind of trouble or anythign else for using it on my laptop and he said no. He said the only thing he could think of is if somehow I set up a network with it on a bunch of computers and was using gigs and gigs of data and that may be an issue, but other wise normal internet usage, ie email, ebay would be fine.

So, I said fine, installed PDAnet.

I have seen lots of scare tactics about Verizon billing people for the free tethering or breaking of contract, but I wanna actually see this in writing before I believe that.

I believe the Rep did say all those things. That being said, half of Verizon's reps have no clue what they are talking about. I've been told that in order to get tethering on the Droid you must get a 59.99 a month mobile broadband account added to your droid. I don't really know what to believe at this point...

 

[davoz28]

Took me an hour to read through all these posts. Pretty fun. All I can say is soak up the free tethering while it lasts. When they start popping people and charging for it maybe ill have a decent isp that doesnt throttle.

PS comcast blows

 

[pc747]

The only way they will know and start cracking down is if so person (or group) decide to go biserk to the point where vzw feel they have to look into it. If every tether er would use common since and only run site you can on your phone and not treat it like it is your only source of a modem then we will be fine. If people want to push it and see how many movies, how much hulu, and how much music they can download before vzw catch on, then vzw gonna feel they need to crack down. Because a lot of times the people acting tough talking about they gonna download all they want cuz it is not in the contract....will be the first one to rat everyone out, talking about where vzw can go to see how many people are tethering, when they get caught.

 

[aminaked]

The only way they will know and start cracking down is if so person (or group) decide to go biserk to the point where vzw feel they have to look into it.

Sounds good. Are you an executive in charge of this at Verizon by any chance?

 

[pc747]

nope but i pay his salary.

 

[aminaked]

nope but i pay his salary.

I actually tend to agree with you. The stories I've seen involve people getting huge bills because of getting charged by the MB. Verizon then has more of an incentive to go after the bigger bandwidth users. If people who've been caught would post here, we might be able to figure out an approximate threshold.

 

[pc747]

nope but i pay his salary.

I actually tend to agree with you. The stories I've seen involve people getting huge bills because of getting charged by the MB. Verizon then has more of an incentive to go after the bigger bandwidth users. If people who've been caught would post here, we might be able to figure out an approximate threshold.

I hear you. The problem like I said is people being "stupid" with it. If they would have used it wisely vzw would not know or care to look into it. If someone is using more bandwith then 5 or 10 times the avg then they gonna want to know what is going on. They are in business to make money and if one person is taking up the space of 5 then they are losing money.

 

[therock]

The fact some bozo who posted here went into a store and rooted a demo Droid and left it rooted doesn't help either. It just helped heat it up.

 

[Dustinmj]

opcorn: Good stuff.

 

[smokiedabong]

I set for a friend a proxy box and SSH tunnel to his house so they can't tell if his tethering , he had over 25 GB per month for the last two months and they can't do nothing because without sniffing and decrypting his packages ( which is illegal ) there is no proof . I'm also using his box for my phone but never got over 10 GB because I don't need to , but if I had to I'll watch 50 GB of Netfix movies with no worries .

 

[pntr2001]

nope but i pay his salary.

I actually tend to agree with you. The stories I've seen involve people getting huge bills because of getting charged by the MB. Verizon then has more of an incentive to go after the bigger bandwidth users. If people who've been caught would post here, we might be able to figure out an approximate threshold.

I was wondering the same thing about how much is too much time on the internet through your phone. I am not very tech savvy and have only used it a couple of times. It has pretty fast service on my laptop and I like the fact I can get internet anywhere I have phone service, but don't want to get a big bill or any trouble, any suggestions or ideas would be welcomed, thanks guys

 

[computermystro]

It's just like how Bright House cable cant tell (easily) which PC on my network gets the most use, as far as they know, it's all going to and from my router.

If you really believe that you could be in for a rude awakening. They can access your router at any time and they can see exactly what each device is doing.

Actually I work for the ISP and it is definitely against the FCC guidelines for us to look inside your "customer owned" modem/router/pc. Now if we provide a modem router combo we can see the traffic and usage of each port and the diagnostics such as signal level. We are also able to upgrade firmware during off peak hours. If anyone has any good questions please let me know...For those people running there mouth you better watch what you say because one day it will bite you in the ass.

Edit, if you want to see what we can see about your modem, I just posted screen shots. Some things had to be edited to save my ass, but you can get the jest.

 

[pntr2001]

Thanks computermystro. not sure what it all means though. I definately don't know much about this stuff. but I will be doing some reading up on it. Thanks again

 

[Jett]

It's just like how Bright House cable cant tell (easily) which PC on my network gets the most use, as far as they know, it's all going to and from my router.

If you really believe that you could be in for a rude awakening. They can access your router at any time and they can see exactly what each device is doing.

Skipped over all 17 pages of posts just to say that you have no idea what you're talking about.

It's only possible for anyone at all to access your router if your router is not secure. The only other way is to physically have access to it, and in order for them to do that, they'd need your cooperation.

 

[oakindustries]

From my experience as an indirect rep...

#1 never go to the store for tech support. Deal with tech support over the phone. They'll ship out a replacement, you put your old one in the box, and ship it back.

#2 If you're going to use a rooted phone see above

#3 Use wifi tether and not the wired one. there is no way for them to prove you were tethered that way.

#4 the stuff the op posted is just fear mongering. there is no way they will enforce that on a large scale. not profitable. not worth the bad pr.