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AT&T Cracking Down on Unauthorized Tethering
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Then you haven't read very much, there's a couple posts here on Mac rumors and on ModMyI
I am going to tell you right now that I bet they are only getting people who tether. I know enough about TCIP to know it is not hard to do it. Given that AT&T is an ISP they are going to be really good at it and know quick ways to do it.
They are just starting to crack down and I going to say they are more than likely starting with the abusers and working their way down the list getting the worse people first and logging and checking their usage.
Fight them on it and AT&T will win. Hell AT&T can and more than likely will end your service and then stick you with the ETF for violating the TOS and therefor you broke the contract.
As my wife just yawned and said "How many times can the same thing be repeated?"
Yes yes they can but that is not what they are doing, this is not new.
last year they did the same thing around this time of year.
Letters went out then it was over till now.
People are stupid. I was posting yesterday minutes before these stories broke about tethering and being careful and knowing that high usage ( over 5gb cap on unlimited) causes a flag. Another "Mac Rumor Expert" was arguing its not true and I was making people scared unwarranted. LOL yeah right
I'm in disagreement about reasonable use people, if you do not abuse the tether and stay within a reasonable Data use they should leave you alone.
Its the 10 or more GB a month people, DL movies and torrents, they are the real abusers.
um... that is what AT&T is OFFERING YOU. $45 a month for 4GB you can use ANYWAY you want. IF you accept restrictions, then you can pay less.
People keep repeating that because so many people here refuse to understand it and keep saying only going after major users.
Last year later if you noticed were more at the big abusers trying to get them to use WIFI more often to reduce the network load.
Based on Poll in the iPhone forum. Only people who teathering a lot are the only one getting hit. While currently most of them have not yet. This tell me they are just working down a list and clearly are able to tell who is teathering and who is not teathering.
Also tells me they are doing something and having no problem figuring out who it is.
No, it isn't. A contract is not law, it is merely a legal agreement. Breaking such agreement can be resolved by a civil lawsuit.
It is not illegal. It may result in being sued but it is not illegal (ie you will not get criminal charges)
Good night AT&T, I'm going to stream a three hour movie from Netflix tonight on my unlimited iPad plan that I will not watch, just to burn your data. I'm going to do this over and over.
Oh, and just for you, I've removed all my 30 - 48 kbps bookmarks in TuneIn Radio withnones that do 128 kbps, and will stream them all the time. I know it's not much, but as I now say...
Oh, and just for you, I've removed all my 30 - 48 kbps bookmarks in TuneIn Radio withnones that do 128 kbps, and will stream them all the time. I know it's not much, but as I now say...
waste 3G data locally, screw AT&T globally.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)
And what about the "Tos" I am supposed to have with ATT which says I am paying for unlimited data which is really not unlimited. Are they in breach? Ive had this plan since iPhone 1. Is this at least false advertising? They have changed there Tos over the years and said take it or leave it.
Just because there is a Tos doesn't mean it is "legal". Take landlords for example...you sign an agreement to live there but not requirements have been determined to be legal. All it takes is a legal challenge to determine. The early termination fee is part of the Tos but in California a court ruled it un fair and they had to adjust. Even jailbreaking itself was ruled legal simply because once I purchase a product it becomes mine. Someone mentioned cable channel packages. If I bought an unlimited plan of cable channels what is my expectation? Half the channels?
And what about the "Tos" I am supposed to have with ATT which says I am paying for unlimited data which is really not unlimited. Are they in breach? Ive had this plan since iPhone 1. Is this at least false advertising? They have changed there Tos over the years and said take it or leave it.
Just because there is a Tos doesn't mean it is "legal". Take landlords for example...you sign an agreement to live there but not requirements have been determined to be legal. All it takes is a legal challenge to determine. The early termination fee is part of the Tos but in California a court ruled it un fair and they had to adjust. Even jailbreaking itself was ruled legal simply because once I purchase a product it becomes mine. Someone mentioned cable channel packages. If I bought an unlimited plan of cable channels what is my expectation? Half the channels?
I've written to my members of Congress to get the FCC to step in and forbid extra charges for tethering. If I pay for 2 GB of data, it's irrelevant HOW I consume it. I've paid for it and it's mine to use as I see fit! The idea of charging ANY fee based on my method of connecting is asinine! If I go over my data limit, either with the phone OR notebook, I get charged for it. AT&T could actually MAKE money, legitimately, from excess data usage.
I asked Congress to step in because they've done it before. Many years ago, the Plain Ol' Telephone Service ("POTS") used to charge extra for EACH jack in your home. They claimed it was a convenience to have a jack in other rooms and customers had to pay for it.
If we follow AT&T Wireless' flawed logic, then the "POTS" should charge an extra fee for hooking up a cordless phone to your landline. Since it allows you to move from room to room more freely, you might talk on the phone more and that could increase your usage. That argument doesn't stand up because, if you're on a limited plan, you pay extra when you go over, regardless of whether you use a wired phone or a cordless one.
The FCC also stopped Cable Companies from charging extra per TV outlet. This happened when "cable ready" TV came out. Equipment rental fees for converter boxes are exempt.
It's time for GREEDY Cell Phone Companies to be forced to STOP this unjustifiable gouging!
Write to the FCC and your representative.
I asked Congress to step in because they've done it before. Many years ago, the Plain Ol' Telephone Service ("POTS") used to charge extra for EACH jack in your home. They claimed it was a convenience to have a jack in other rooms and customers had to pay for it.
If we follow AT&T Wireless' flawed logic, then the "POTS" should charge an extra fee for hooking up a cordless phone to your landline. Since it allows you to move from room to room more freely, you might talk on the phone more and that could increase your usage. That argument doesn't stand up because, if you're on a limited plan, you pay extra when you go over, regardless of whether you use a wired phone or a cordless one.
The FCC also stopped Cable Companies from charging extra per TV outlet. This happened when "cable ready" TV came out. Equipment rental fees for converter boxes are exempt.
It's time for GREEDY Cell Phone Companies to be forced to STOP this unjustifiable gouging!
Write to the FCC and your representative.
more info.
Thank you for the information that you have given in the post, can you give me more information about this.
ModMyI and our forums have reported that some users are receiving notices from AT&T about unauthorized tethering. Tethering is the act of sharing your iPhone's 3G connection with another device. AT&T charges an additional fee for this activity.
Some users received the above SMS message with a followup email explaining tethering and warning them that tethering will be enabled if they continue to use that feature.TiPb speculates on how they are detecting unauthorized tethering:
Article Link: AT&T Cracking Down on Unauthorized Tethering
You know so much that you can't even use the correct acronym?!?! This is just comical. This would take tremendous effort. Could they do it? Yes, at great cost. Have they done it? I seriously doubt it. In fact the evidence lends itself to the idea that it's just data volume. Some who have never tethered receive notices and many who regularly tether have not received notification.
It's much easier to simply capture data volume metrics than it is to get into the business of packet inspection, syslogging, etc. In fact, the message in the OP's message isn't new. I received that one about 2 years ago, long before I ever started tethering.
OK the internal memo now.............Do the people who say At&t will not FIRE you or continue to look for out of contract tethering on a regular basis is not true?
LOL I think those idiots who thought it was ok to Download 90GB and 120GB a month are now SOL, and should be owned by At&t
but this ruins Unlimited for the rest of us, it is clear with this action
Unlimited is now dead, you go over 5gb a month and your then flagged as a tether
I'm telling you that this is the secondary purpose, in At&t's eyes unlimited is evil, it causes users to think they have unlimited data and should be able to use 100gb a month and abuse the Data.
You say Verizon won't do this? Then your a FOOL!
Verizon has already said they will Throttle high use people. Make CDMA slower then it is now so Unusable.
Why did this happen? 2% of 15 million Iphone owners and who knows how many Android users are abusing the data plans
at least 300,000 users
I said it before
300,000 abusers are switched off of $30 a month or made to add $20 tether plan to the 2gb $25 plan
revenue generated? 200,000 at extra $15 for the 25 plus 20 dropping unlimited is 3 million dollars, 100,000 add the $20 plan generates 2 million dollars, that is 5 million dollars a month or 60 million dollars a year in lost revenue to At&t
if you could increase revenues by potential 50 to 60,000,000 year do you not think At&t CEO would say awesome?
Per the internal At&t memo I jsut posted from another Post here on Mac Rumors, Yes they are going after High Use people for the most part and the Ipad Sim switchers.
At&t has probably seen a Data (Abuse) spike with Ipad and now want to squash the abuse they feel is happening.
A little research has proven to me that if its 2% of the 15 million Iphone users then its as high as 300,000 morons using 10GB or more of data a month.
I think more then 10GB a month is a lot and could be thought of as abuse.
Before 2007 ( just a few years ago) no one offered unlimited
After introduced a certain number of people thought they could ditch the home internet and tether........ the number grew and it seems too much for At&t to ignore.
Look I think reasonable use of tethering should be allowed and AT&t should not be charging for it as long as you stay within the limit.
Unlimited 5GB
Data Pro 2gb
Idiots who want to use 50 GB a month OK this is the new cost
Data pro with tether 4gb at $45 each GB additional $10
so 45 plus 46gb at $10 a month is $505 a month for you to stream and Download................................
Math of lost revenue if you were following rules about 6,000 a year for internet. If its as high as only 50,000 going 50gb and over? At&t can say they lost 300,000,000 in revenue a year now.
If I took these numbers to the CEO of AT&t what would they say?
Sucks for AT&T cause I use 30+ GB per month without tethering. I never got any notices or any warnings.
I support this.
The number of corporate shills and self-righteous pricks on here is unbelievable.
Oh wait, I'm already a thief because I jailbroke to change my SMS tones and add a calander for my upcoming cases to the lockscreen.
Glad to see the productive turn this thread has taken...as all threads on MR do.
Anyway. I'm alright with the news. I pay $45 a month for tethering, why shouldn't you also?
Anyway. I'm alright with the news. I pay $45 a month for tethering, why shouldn't you also?
These often aren't worth much more than the paper they're written on in contracts of this type.
Arbitration also isn't the only option provided for in the dispute section.
Thank you. Beat me to it. It is not illegal to break a contract, and in fact, some very prominent scholars and judges advocate breaking contracts in certain situations,
Additionally, just because something is in a contract doesn't mean it will be enforced in court. A contract is worth only as much as the court that hear it says it is worth.
I also think there is a viable case to be made against AT&T for misrepresentation (advertising unlimited data, but imposing limitations buried in the contract), which would make the contract voidable.
Verizon was sued for something similar and settled for $1 million and a bunch of other things. They had advertised unlimited data, but put in the contract that this data was not to be used fir mms, video, etc. A bit more extreme, but similar.
Not all contracts are legal, the courts decide if the contract was legally binding,
I have contended that the whole tethering thing is not legal from the beginning sir. Lighten up. I contend if I pay for Data and abide by reasonable use then it should not matter if I tether or not.
They want to make all us pay extra to use the Data we already paid for because its on a Laptop through the phone.
Double Dipping. If I use 3gb a month on my Iphone and part of that is on the Laptop it should not cost extra its reasonable.
Oh and my lawyer is 11 YO LOL
Of course At&t will not take me to court, they will however take the idiots using more then 20Gb a month tethering since they make good examples of abuse..........................Scapegoats and morons to think they could get way with 90 and 120GB a month usage.
And for good reason....but this is not one of those reasons (which tend to involve commercial contracts for the sale/purchase of supplies used in production or manufacturing). This is more like breaking a lease.
Yes, this is true, and that's why they teach it to you in law school. *But* that gives the misleading impression that this is common; in actual fact, it's not common at all. Almost all actual contract litigation involves a dispute about whether some action was covered by the contract or not. No one will reform a contract because it calls for you to pay for an extra convenience that doesn't happen to cost the provider anything. You might as well try to overturn a lease containing a rental increase by proving that the landlord's costs didn't go up. Except in the .0001% of leases covered by specific rent control laws, this won't fly. If it's too much, you move to a place with a more reasonable rent.
Think harder.
1. AT&T isn't going after people with unlimited data plans. They are going after people who tether. Tethering has never been permitted as part of the unlimited data plan, and this has always been clear; the "data pro/plus" plans were introduced with tethering, and switching to one of those plans was a requirement of tethering.
2. Even if you were right about misleading advertising for the unlimited plan (and I don't think you are), what good does voiding the contract do? It leaves you with an AT&T phone that you can't use because you don't have a K. Of course you could switch to Verizon, but that would require $2-$300 for a new phone and a new two year K. And Verizon's K is more restrictive than AT&T's - it still costs $20 more to tether, but you only get 2GB rather than 4GB.
Perhaps you could then jailbreak and avoid the extra cost - but that would assume that Verizon wouldn't do the same thing AT&T is doing now.
So it's not really a great remedy.
It would be much more useful in those European countries that already have several iPhone carriers...although they already tend not to charge for tethering.
Well, except that this case is about tethering, not about unlimited data. And that AT&T's advertising is not misleading and they reference the 5GB cap in their terms of service. And don't use the term "unlimited."
So it doesn't look that similar to me.
WHAT A STUPID LOGIC
cable you get extra contents/feature for paying extra (HBO, Showtime, HDTV)
with data, you dont get any extra (data =data)
from what i learned and remember, 1 will always be and =1.
so if you paid for 2GB data, it should be 2GB data no matter how you wanna used it.