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Scarpad

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 13, 2005
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When I had my Iphone 5 on AT&T I remember in order to tether to another device I had to pay an extra charge, this might have been before IOS 7 I cannot remember. With my current phone which is a Lumia 1520 Windows phone, I can set it up as a mobile Hotspot, something that comes in handy for my laptop when I'm out and about. I'm thinking of going to an Iphone 6 early next year and wondering with IOS 8 will I be able to do this ?
 
Its up to the carrier to allow you to tether, not the phone, so while iOS6 and beyond has this ability, if your carrier prevented it, you couldn't.

VZW allows you to tether and so regardless of the version of iOS or even the phone type (I'm on Lumia Icon) I'm able to tether.
 
When I had my Iphone 5 on AT&T I remember in order to tether to another device I had to pay an extra charge, this might have been before IOS 7 I cannot remember. With my current phone which is a Lumia 1520 Windows phone, I can set it up as a mobile Hotspot, something that comes in handy for my laptop when I'm out and about. I'm thinking of going to an Iphone 6 early next year and wondering with IOS 8 will I be able to do this ?

Generally speaking (at least with Verizon) you can tether as long as you aren't still on an unlimited plan. I have a tiered data plan with VZW and I can tether which counts against my data usage.
 
Generally speaking (at least with Verizon) you can tether as long as you aren't still on an unlimited plan. I have a tiered data plan with VZW and I can tether which counts against my data usage.

For customers still on the unlimited data plan, there is a $30 add-on feature that gives you unlimited mobile hotspot (tethering), but it still counts against your main data pool of unlimited GBs. But even if you don't pay for that, I've not read of anyone being kicked off their plan for tethering without paying for it.
 
When I had my Iphone 5 on AT&T I remember in order to tether to another device I had to pay an extra charge, this might have been before IOS 7 I cannot remember. With my current phone which is a Lumia 1520 Windows phone, I can set it up as a mobile Hotspot, something that comes in handy for my laptop when I'm out and about. I'm thinking of going to an Iphone 6 early next year and wondering with IOS 8 will I be able to do this ?

What rate plan are you on? Most likely you switched to a newer rate plan (like Mobile Share) that permits tethering. So more likely than not, you'll be able to tether fine on an iPhone.
 
I have Verizon, although expensive i can tether anywhere that i am in need of service. Its a trade off for me do i want no tethering and a cheaper plan or tethering and a little more expensive. Then again if i were to go with AT&T and get tethering it would cost more than Verizon probably.
 
I have an ATT grandfathered unlimited data plan on my phone, iPhone 5 with ios7. If I go to settings and try to activate the tethering option a notification pops up saying I have to contact ATT to turn this feature on. I assume they want to charge me for tethering since I have unlimited data.
 
I have an ATT grandfathered unlimited data plan on my phone, iPhone 5 with ios7. If I go to settings and try to activate the tethering option a notification pops up saying I have to contact ATT to turn this feature on. I assume they want to charge me for tethering since I have unlimited data.

They want to do more than that: if you want tethering, they will require that you go off your grandfathered unlimited plan and onto a current data-limited plan. Even when AT&T signed people up on unlimited iPhone data plans, they would not offer tethering on it. You had to go on a more expensive, capped plan, and even that took about a year after Mobile Hotspot was introduced in iOS, that AT&T allowed it at any price.
 
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