VZW disabling tethering apps from market

[czerdrill]

Drill so did you ever have a router back in the day before you were allowed to?

Or you probably paid for a seperate modem for each computer you had.

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Back in the day, I had one computer LOL...I'm not an old man with a cane like some of you think haha (I'm 30, I guess 30 can be old to some...)...back in those days, my parents would have been paying, and I would have nothing to do with it. I dont remember ever not using a router when I started paying for my own service and if it wasn't allowed, I definitely wasn't aware of that LOL.

 

[BlueSami]

I am 28.
But I like how you just pushed it on to your patents. Of course my parents paid but I knew what was going on. Because I was. The one calling to reslove issues.

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[xan]

did someone really refer to free tether as being the same as murder?

I drove the speed limit for the last two days as an experiment, now that was murder!

 

[BlueSami]

did someone really refer to free tether as being the same as murder?

I drove the speed limit for the last two days as an experiment, now that was murder!

I exgagerated what drill said. Lol

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[czerdrill]

I am 28.
But I like how you just pushed it on to your patents. Of course my parents paid but I knew what was going on. Because I was. The one calling to reslove issues.

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

And I wasn't. I mean...does your experience have to parallel mine? Back in those days, I used the computer to get online. I didn't know whether routers were allowed or not, I didn't pay the bill, I didn't call in when things went wrong.

When I started paying myself, I used a router. I wasn't aware that it wasn't allowed, and if it wasn't Optimum never told me I can't do it.

Not sure why you're thinking "I pushed it on your parents"...just because your were involved in calling in doesn't mean every other person on the planet should be too...

 

[czerdrill]

Yes the TOS exist but vzw basically put themselves in a weird position because they know they had reps recommend 3rd party apps. SO what you going to do punish a user for taking advice from a rep in the store. And if vzw do not have away to keep up with tethering data through a program then all I have to do as a user is tell vzw to charge me for their tethering plan. And since they dont have one they cant just charge you for a mobile hot spot plan if you used pdanet. Now if you used wifi tethering for root users or barnacle then you are out of luck because they have a plan for that.My point is that before you can crack down you need to put something in place so users can purchase and what they have now was built around the blackberry devices. Though a smartphone is a smartphone, rims supplying them with the drivers and programs allowed them to build a program where android is just to volatile to even waste time building such a program unless you copy pdanet.

Come on man, you gotta take responsibility for what you're doing. Stop trying to pass the buck. First of all, don't tell me that all the tetherers are misguided souls who were just obeying what the reps told them. And second, even if they were (which they weren't) that's not going to fly. you are responsible for knowing the terms of your contract. trying to say "a rep told me so" doesn't put you off the hook and yes if verizon wanted to they could punish you for it. Whether they will or not is another story.

but i do agree with you that the whole thing is a mess. verizon came out and said "droid doesnt support this" and the devs found a way around it. the problem is like you said the idiots who replaced their ISP with VZW and then try to justify it. Verizon has no incentive to please those people, because they stole service plain and simple. It would be great if they came out with tiered plans that included hotspot/tethering but i dont see the incentive for that either, because they have their ridiculous 2GB/$20 plan in place...

Take your head out the sand for a minute. How many people call up vzw and say "I am tethering". And what part of vzw blindly gave the green light did you not get. So to say "you are violating the tos", apparently not if its their tos and they gave the green light. You can say what you want to say but you can not sit here and tell me they had no clue their employees were recommending 3rd party apps. It just got out of hand. But they still have not fixed the problem. You can either continue to ticket the skateboarders for skating on public property or you can build them a skate park. Stop bashing all the users. Vzw put themselves here and they have not solved thr problem. Stop lumping the 20 gig users with the average tetherer's because it is apparent that vzw did not have an issue with the light users. But until they put in place something for those trying to do it the right way then all you will have is the cat and mouse game because 3rd party devs are build ing programs and vzw isnt, and when you try to pay their is nothing in place so the circle continues.

Woah, take it easy. This is why I don't enjoy posting on these forums sometimes. Because when I make a post, people get defensive. I'm stating how it is, and what it is. You are refusing to see what it is.

Yes, absolutely verizon knows some of their reps are recommending tethering apps. No one is debating that. My argument, and it holds, is that it doesn't matter. The TOS trumps what some rep says. If a cop told you, "hey don't worry go ahead and skate here on the sidewalk" and then another cop tickets you, will saying "but that cop told me" somehow take you off the hook for that ticket? Or if your coworker tells you "go ahead and take some of the laptops home, it's cool" and then your boss fires you, will saying "but jimmy told me" somehow make the boss say "oh that silly jimmy! always playing tricks!!" Blaming misguided reps is not a get out of jail free card.

Second, where did I bash all users? Again, stop being so defensive because I don't agree with your point of view. I myself have stated multiple, multiple times that I think $20/2GB is the most ridiculous pricing on the planet and I think Verizon absolutely needs to re-examine their plans. I think its completely unfair that the idiots who boast about 150GB a month are being lumped in the same group as those who use tethering just to check a quick email. Please don't put words in my mouth.

I'm with you that they need a solution, and they dropped the ball big time on this. I'm not with you that simply because they don't have a solution, that that gives you the right to steal service from them. Clearly, we have differing views on what's right and wrong, and that's fine.

 

[NeoandGeo]

You're not stealing service when you do a wired tether, since they don't offer that service. You're using the EXACT same data, in the exact same way. The 3G hotspot app is a different story, and you are technically stealing if you use a non-adhoc wireless connection to connect one or more devices to their network.

 

[pc747]

Come on man, you gotta take responsibility for what you're doing. Stop trying to pass the buck. First of all, don't tell me that all the tetherers are misguided souls who were just obeying what the reps told them. And second, even if they were (which they weren't) that's not going to fly. you are responsible for knowing the terms of your contract. trying to say "a rep told me so" doesn't put you off the hook and yes if verizon wanted to they could punish you for it. Whether they will or not is another story.

but i do agree with you that the whole thing is a mess. verizon came out and said "droid doesnt support this" and the devs found a way around it. the problem is like you said the idiots who replaced their ISP with VZW and then try to justify it. Verizon has no incentive to please those people, because they stole service plain and simple. It would be great if they came out with tiered plans that included hotspot/tethering but i dont see the incentive for that either, because they have their ridiculous 2GB/$20 plan in place...

Take your head out the sand for a minute. How many people call up vzw and say "I am tethering". And what part of vzw blindly gave the green light did you not get. So to say "you are violating the tos", apparently not if its their tos and they gave the green light. You can say what you want to say but you can not sit here and tell me they had no clue their employees were recommending 3rd party apps. It just got out of hand. But they still have not fixed the problem. You can either continue to ticket the skateboarders for skating on public property or you can build them a skate park. Stop bashing all the users. Vzw put themselves here and they have not solved thr problem. Stop lumping the 20 gig users with the average tetherer's because it is apparent that vzw did not have an issue with the light users. But until they put in place something for those trying to do it the right way then all you will have is the cat and mouse game because 3rd party devs are build ing programs and vzw isnt, and when you try to pay their is nothing in place so the circle continues.

Woah, take it easy. This is why I don't enjoy posting on these forums sometimes. Because when I make a post, people get defensive. I'm stating how it is, and what it is. You are refusing to see what it is.

Yes, absolutely verizon knows some of their reps are recommending tethering apps. No one is debating that. My argument, and it holds, is that it doesn't matter. The TOS trumps what some rep says. If a cop told you, "hey don't worry go ahead and skate here on the sidewalk" and then another cop tickets you, will saying "but that cop told me" somehow take you off the hook for that ticket? Or if your coworker tells you "go ahead and take some of the laptops home, it's cool" and then your boss fires you, will saying "but jimmy told me" somehow make the boss say "oh that silly jimmy! always playing tricks!!" Blaming misguided reps is not a get out of jail free card.

Second, where did I bash all users? Again, stop being so defensive because I don't agree with your point of view. I myself have stated multiple, multiple times that I think $20/2GB is the most ridiculous pricing on the planet and I think Verizon absolutely needs to re-examine their plans. I think its completely unfair that the idiots who boast about 150GB a month are being lumped in the same group as those who use tethering just to check a quick email. Please don't put words in my mouth.

I'm with you that they need a solution, and they dropped the ball big time on this. I'm not with you that simply because they don't have a solution, that that gives you the right to steal service from them. Clearly, we have differing views on what's right and wrong, and that's fine.

Im not angry or being defensive I think you are reading it wrong. But what I am saying is yes when you tether you are violating the tos. And so we understand each other, I am not talking about wifi tether users because again they have aplan for them. If you get caught they can slap the 2for 20 on you. This is for wired tether users, those using pdanet. They dont and probably wont have a program for the android devices because they are having issues with building that because of defragmentation. So even if you were to get caught using pdanet and you said "bill me I will pay" they cant. The only plan the have in place is the 5 for 15 plan. They have been using vzaccess manager to track usage: VZAccess Manager . But if they cant get it to work then they are back in the same pickle they were 2 years ago when the d1 was first able to tether. We spent an hour, the vzw rep and I, trying to change out drivers to get it to work for the tbolt. I am going to try to build something tonight and submit it to vzw and see if we can get that approved. By the way czerdrill we are saying the same thing sort of, but we have an 80 page thread with no solution, I am trying to come up with a solution.

 

[kodiak799]

I'm with you that they need a solution, and they dropped the ball big time on this.

They're not dropping the ball, they're protecting their mobile broadband plans they make a boatload of money on.

Now I don't know why they don't have a $5 add-on (like they do for texting) for some very light tethering. But I imagine they are struggling with the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. If they include tether and cap at 2gigs, people who don't need it or use it and would prefer a higher cap without tether for the same price aren't going to be happy.

LOL, I can only imagine the debates if they had separate tiers like that, because you just KNOW the abusers (which seem mostly absent from this thread) will opt for the higher cap and then tether illegally and still try to claim they already paid for the data.

They've got a boatload of analysis from people using free hotspot on the TBolt, which expires in about 10 days....I suspect the timing of all this is not coincidental. Had I gotten the TBolt I would certainly have shut-off home broadband and saved myself $100 while hotspot was free, and my usage would have been 20x what it normally is.

If they go to tiers and include tether, I think they probably expect a significant portion of users to go from the average of 500megs a month or whatever it is right up to the cap (think of people dropping data plans for the IPad/Xoom). That is not a trivial capacity issue, at least for 3G in some of the more congested cities. Which brings me back to the issue of pricing - if you're going to halve your capacity by including tether, then your price would need to be higher than $30 and that will upset a lot of customers.

 

[xan]

did someone really refer to free tether as being the same as murder?

I drove the speed limit for the last two days as an experiment, now that was murder!

I exgagerated what drill said. Lol

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sorry my eye sight is getting bad at my age...it be do much better if I could read this thread on a bigger screen...but it ain't worth $20 to do so.

I know vrz has special text only plans for the deaf,i wonder why we can't get free tether for the visually impaired?

 

[czerdrill]

I'm with you that they need a solution, and they dropped the ball big time on this.

They're not dropping the ball, they're protecting their mobile broadband plans they make a boatload of money on.

Now I don't know why they don't have a $5 add-on (like they do for texting) for some very light tethering. But I imagine they are struggling with the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. If they include tether and cap at 2gigs, people who don't need it or use it and would prefer a higher cap without tether for the same price aren't going to be happy.

LOL, I can only imagine the debates if they had separate tiers like that, because you just KNOW the abusers (which seem mostly absent from this thread) will opt for the higher cap and then tether illegally and still try to claim they already paid for the data.

They've got a boatload of analysis from people using free hotspot on the TBolt, which expires in about 10 days....I suspect the timing of all this is not coincidental. Had I gotten the TBolt I would certainly have shut-off home broadband and saved myself $100 while hotspot was free, and my usage would have been 20x what it normally is.

If they go to tiers and include tether, I think they probably expect a significant portion of users to go from the average of 500megs a month or whatever it is right up to the cap (think of people dropping data plans for the IPad/Xoom). That is not a trivial capacity issue, at least for 3G in some of the more congested cities. Which brings me back to the issue of pricing - if you're going to halve your capacity by including tether, then your price would need to be higher than $30 and that will upset a lot of customers.

No you're right. That's why I mentioned earlier that they have no incentive to include tethering in a tiered plan, because they have their ridiculous plans already in place. When I said "dropping the ball" I meant, they came out and explicitly said the droid cant do tethering/hotspot, and the devs showed that it could, so now they're scrambling to figure out how to stop it. I personally don't see them offering tethering as included in any tier simply because they'll be undercutting themselves.

 

[NeoandGeo]

They don't have to undercut themselves. Offer unlimited smartphone-screen-only data for $29, or 5GB hard cap smartphone-data.

Very simple, and they will make great revenue, and protect their network stability.

 

[kodiak799]

No you're right. That's why I mentioned earlier that they have no incentive to include tethering in a tiered plan, because they have their ridiculous plans already in place. When I said "dropping the ball" I meant, they came out and explicitly said the droid cant do tethering/hotspot, and the devs showed that it could, so now they're scrambling to figure out how to stop it. I personally don't see them offering tethering as included in any tier simply because they'll be undercutting themselves.

Personally, I think they are scrambling because of LTE, especially the way they promoted hotspot. I don't think tether, outside of a small % of abusers, is much of an issue on the 3G network. It's just too slow for anyone that can afford home broadband to bother with. Heck, my phone average maybe 700kbps, and tether only peaks at about half that (probably averages like 120).

If you look at AT&T, pretty much the same story. They started getting aggressive around the time of HSUPA and the Atrix. Sprint is apparently ready to end unlimited mobile broadband on Wimax.

 

[kodiak799]

They don't have to undercut themselves. Offer unlimited smartphone-screen-only data for $29

LOL, like they already do, except it costs $30.

 

[NeoandGeo]

Actually they are offering smartphone data for $29 a month. And I am taking advantage of it. FULLY.

But I'm smart enough to realize that it's not limited to phone screen only....