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CarPlay and AT&T unlimited data

PCtoMAC1

PCtoMAC1

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 16, 2012
423
181
Hey everyone: just looking for some advice. I have the grandfathered unlimited data plan with AT&T and have a rental car that has CarPlay.

Does using CarPlay give AT&T a reason to pull me off unlimited data? I know you are not permitted to tether to a device and I don't want to lose my plan.

I have a stock iOS device.

Thanks!
 
CarPlay has nothing to do with your carrier. It works on Bluetooth directly communicating with the vehicle. The carrier is not involved. I would reset the vehicle after you are done in case it copy's you contact info.
 
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Newtons Apple said:
CarPlay has nothing to do with your carrier. It works on Bluetooth directly communicating with the vehicle. The carrier is not involved. I would reset the vehicle after you are done in case it copy's you contact info.
Click to expand...

While wireless CarPlay is possible I am not aware of any cars that support it. It is a wired connection to the iPhone and the car. But it is not a tether as it is only using the apps on the iPhone.
 
PCtoMAC1 said:
Hey everyone: just looking for some advice. I have the grandfathered unlimited data plan with AT&T and have a rental car that has CarPlay.

Does using CarPlay give AT&T a reason to pull me off unlimited data? I know you are not permitted to tether to a device and I don't want to lose my plan.

I have a stock iOS device.

Thanks!
Click to expand...


I don't think that this would be a problem, but I suppose that technically it is "tethered" to your car. Its not different from connecting your laptop to your phone to get an internet connection and then accessing internet apps from the laptop. With CarPlay, you connect your car's head unit to the internet via your phone. There is a big difference in that you can only use a small number of apps. Those apps, however, are mostly streaming apps and navigation. Since the current CarPlay enabled streaming apps are all just audio, it probably wouldn't raise any eyebrows at your carrier. Video streaming is the thing they are probably going to freak out about most.

But, you can chew up some bandwidth with CarPlay. For example, we have Apple Music and my daughter loves to keep skipping to the next song. Unless you are only playing local songs, each time you do that is downloading a song. I mostly play music or podcasts that are already on my phone, but do occasionally ask siri to play things that are not. And I use maps for navigation a lot. I've not noticed any big increase in my data usage since getting CarPlay so far.

The other thing you have going for you is that unlimited is starting to become much more popular again with Spring and T-Mobile pushing it so hard... so I would expect that now would not be the time that AT&T would look for a technicality to get rid of it on your account. AT&T has already recently started offering more unlimited options so I think you'd be fine.
 
Car play is just a different UI to your phone (one of the reasons why it's frustrating Apple doesn't just add s car mode to their phones, it that's for another thread). It's not tethering data so much as it is a different way to control your device.

I was going to compare it to the Apple Watch but even that is, conceptually speaking, using tethered data more than CarPlay is.
 
Newtons Apple said:
You could pull the SIM card out of the iPhone and it would still do carplay. It is just a BT connection and has nothing to do with the carrier.
Click to expand...

Car play would be pretty useless without a SIM card.

Also it isn't a BT connection but a wired connection to the car.
 
I used car play and android auto in the rental 2016 Hyundai Sonata I had for one month while my other car was in the shop.

It's very simple to use. In my opinion. Siri is much useful in car play than it is in my daily life.

Android auto obviously has the better maps integration.

Spotify worked well in both android auto and CarPlay.
 
Stewie said:
Map updates, streaming music, phone calls, SMS. All the things your phone needs a connection to the carrier for.
Click to expand...

Right, which is why I said it could be viewed similarly to tethering.

That said, you could use CarPlay purely to play music and podcasts already on your device, and not use any carrier data... but that would be a bit inconvenient to turn off data to use CarPlay. I've not noticed any big jump in my data use when adding CarPlay. That is probably because I was already using navigation most of the time in the car, and most of my listening is already loaded onto my phone.
 
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