Will tethering on droid get you in trouble with VZW?

[pc747]

I was writing some long dissertation but decided to just keep it to this.

We paid for an unlimited data plan. I can download 10GB on my phone just as easily as I can to my PC through my phone, bandwidth arguments are pointless.

This isn't a "here's a bowl of candy, take as much as you want and you only take what you need because it's polite" situation, we're paying for this service, there's no reason why we can't use it to the fullest of our abilities while others choose to use it for almost nothing.

So if you wanna argue VZWs fine print about tethering go for it, but arguing bandwidth is stupid. The internet is not going to become some communist bandwidth regime.

The phone was already sold by the time I was asking these questions, lol. Droid is my first smart phone, that was enough for me. Any extra features were just a bonus, I could live fine without it before so I thought I'd might as well ask while I'm there.

Did I mention I don't even use tethering? I have no notebook pc and cable internet at home.

I've read this thread and WOW. ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. I can't wait to read the thread that says "OMG $50,000.00 VZW bill".

exactly.....people gonna do what they gonna do. I find it funny that people still have the notion that they gonna use the "unlimited data" for tethering and think they will have an argument in court.
Ok we will see what happens.

 

[Snoking]

SO obviously vzw knows about our tethering capability.

AGain I can not stress this enough; If you use it sparingly and do not tether enough to justify paying 20-40 per month then pdanet/wifi tether is good.

So bright one, if you have wifi service to the phone, why would one tether their laptop, as most laptops come with wifi now?

SNOKING

 

[JCo352]

SO obviously vzw knows about our tethering capability.

AGain I can not stress this enough; If you use it sparingly and do not tether enough to justify paying 20-40 per month then pdanet/wifi tether is good.

So bright one, if you have wifi service to the phone, why would one tether their laptop, as most laptops come with wifi now?

SNOKING

Nice first post...what are you asking?

Edit: I get your question, and you are mistaken, wifi-tether is an app for rooted users that turns your droid into a wifi hotspot.

 

[pc747]

SO obviously vzw knows about our tethering capability.

AGain I can not stress this enough; If you use it sparingly and do not tether enough to justify paying 20-40 per month then pdanet/wifi tether is good.

So bright one, if you have wifi service to the phone, why would one tether their laptop, as most laptops come with wifi now?

SNOKING

There are some places where ther is not a wifi signal any where. Where I am at only the starbucks have wifi. And there are times at work where I need to go online but can not use my droid. So I will use my netbook through my droid through pdanet to pull of aircraft manuals.

 

[cb2000a]

I would look for Verizon to put data limits on phone plans in the near future.

 

[Snoking]

I would look for Verizon to put data limits on phone plans in the near future.

That is not the direction the industry is headed. Unlimited is a big marketing hook! SNOKING

 

[Snoking]

SO obviously vzw knows about our tethering capability.

AGain I can not stress this enough; If you use it sparingly and do not tether enough to justify paying 20-40 per month then pdanet/wifi tether is good.

So bright one, if you have wifi service to the phone, why would one tether their laptop, as most laptops come with wifi now?

SNOKING

Nice first post...what are you asking?

Edit: I get your question, and you are mistaken, wifi-tether is an app for rooted users that turns your droid into a wifi hotspot.

Deleted. Snoking

 

[takeshi]

That is not the direction the industry is headed. Unlimited is a big marketing hook!

What's your basis for that? In March Verizon's CTO stated that the unlimited approach to data plans "had to change". IIRC, at&t was recently hinting at the same.

 

[jsh1120]

That is not the direction the industry is headed. Unlimited is a big marketing hook!

What's your basis for that? In March Verizon's CTO stated that the unlimited approach to data plans "had to change". IIRC, at&t was recently hinting at the same.

What you're seeing are the cross-cutting incentives/pressures in a competitive market. On one hand every carrier wants to change the pricing of internet access to reflect actual use. On the other, if any one carrier does so they provide a significant marketing advantage to their competitors.

The issue is further complicated by the so-called "net neutrality" fight that is more a political issue than an economic one. Once tiered pricing for internet access is introduced for phones, there's no technical reason that it cannot be introduced for other devices. But there's a large coalition that opposes any such tiered pricing.

All in all, what's obvious is that the carriers would love to introduce price hikes for internet access as a group if they could get away with it without drawing the attention of the anti-trust division of the Justice Department.

 

[huskur]

Unlimited is indeed a big deal. Kinda like Comcast and their internet service. 250 GB limit. Of course that is an immense amount of bandwidth but still "it's a limit".

If VZW started limiting their bandwidth by GB i would think about a just a simple phone for making calls and texting. I absolutely hate worrying about "am i close to my limit? or how much do i have left? Kinda crap.............

 

[Snoking]

That is not the direction the industry is headed. Unlimited is a big marketing hook!

What's your basis for that? In March Verizon's CTO stated that the unlimited approach to data plans "had to change". IIRC, at&t was recently hinting at the same.

If that is the case, then hang on to your plan! The original broadband users still get unlimited data, newer air cards have the 5G limit. It is hard to take away a promised feature.

If they put a cap on data used, then it would most likely be on new contracts and existing contracts would be grandfathered until the next upgrade.

Then XYZ offers unlimited to gain market share and the cycle starts over!

SNOKING

 

[pc747]

I believe unlimited will stay unlimited. The droid, even with flash, can only pull so much info and they can base an average around that. The problem comes when people tether and use a bunch of torrents, and go to sites the droid can not handle. The way vzw can crack on that is to take the avg data used by droids, and other smart phones, a month.
Out of all the droid owners 15% probably go to forums, and of that maybe 10-12% tether, and 10% of those are the ones going crazy with it.
A multi billion dollar corporation is smart with it. They have charts and graphs and can determine a spike coming from a small percent of users. If they decide that they need to crack down on it, what is to keep them from seeing the sites you go to, then take a factory droid and try to access those same sites and see if it can be accessed and if they are drawing the same amount of data useage in a one month period. That is all the evidence they need to then send people a bill.

 

[harv2000]

All I know is I want legal tethering on my Droid. I would be annoyed by exorbitant rates associated with it, but frankly, I know it has to come in beneath the $60/month I'm paying for the Mifi. What the Droid would add to the picture is the fact that the Droid is always with me, while the Mifi may be in use with one or another computer and not on the computer that I'm at.

I've seen enough of these things over the years to KNOW that it is quite possible to be detected if one is in anything resembling major violation of the EULA, and and once detected, getting out from under things is costly, time consuming and beyond annoying. Life becomes very uncomfortable for a long while and you find yourself talking with people who are trained to make your life miserable.

My preference would be to see all those efforts at legitemizing free tethering going into pressuring Verizon to legitemize tethering on the Droid. Negotiation rather than antagonism.

 

[Detonation]

eh nothing yet and dont see anything coming soon. SOO TIME TO GET ME SOME NOOBS

Yea because that logic makes sense..."nothing has happened yet so i guess nothing will happen in the future"

Either you are just trolling, or mommy and daddy are going to pretty angry when they get a hefty bill/disconnected because their ignorant kid thinks he can do whatever he wants.

 

[Diordna]

No unlimited plan, and I tether. But I just rooted a few days ago and tether very little so far. I don't need to a lot at all but I think it's really neat to have. One of the best things I have on here now, it's awesome.
My bill shouldn't increase at all from tethering some whatever kbp/s.
I'm not worried at all with it. I'll use it to get on the internet here and there but not playing xbox live lol thats ridiculous.. but maybe it's worth a test shot just to see that happen lol