Why do phone companies charge for tethering?

[mshoo1]

I have one question regarding tethering that is not addressed in the AT&T press release. How does the tethering charge apply to family plans? Is the $20 tethering charge assessed on each iPhone or does the $20 cover all of the iPhones on a family plan?

 

[SAD*FACED*CLOWN]

Protest the tethering fee.... 😕

Tethering uses more bandwidth than a normal Smartphone user. 98% of normal users will only use a couple hundred MB's. Tethering uses much more. So they charge more for it even if you stay under your 2GB's. Plenty of people will pay extra for tethering anyway.....

I like it. It helps to keep the bandwidth available for the rest of us. 😀

yes PROTEST it...just beacause you have the ability to tether DOES NOT mean you will go over your cap...it's a hardware feature and I would like to be able to use it when I want to...and in all honesty I probably will only use tethering sporadically...

 

[gazzrenn]

I'm very confused to why ATT(and other phone companies) are able to charge extra for the ability of a phone to tether. Tethering is a hardware feature, and has nothing at all to do with the phone service. Its the same as the phone's ability to use bluetooth or sync with a computer.I don't see why it has anything to do with the phone service and wonder how they got into that space to begin with?

The only justification I can see is that when one tethers, they might end up using more bandwidth. However, that does not justify the extra price for tethering, since whether you tether or not, you still are restricted to the same bandwidth cap as non-tethering customers. So looking at the new ATT plans, if you don't tether, you are allowed to use 2 GB a month for $25. If you do tether, you are allowed to use 2 GB a month for $45! ATT's network is not affected at all by tethering, so the only justification for charging $20 extra is gouging the customers.

....because telcos don't make money from phonecalls like they did in 1995.

 

[cmChimera]

I understand the "They can" argument, because it is true.

Tethering charges are wrong in my opinion however. If I pay for unlimited data, I should be able to use that data however I please. Would you be mad if you had to pay for a song twice if you wanted it on your computer and your iPod?

 

[jav6454]

I understand the "They can" argument, because it is true.

Tethering charges are wrong in my opinion however. If I pay for unlimited data, I should be able to use that data however I please. Would you be mad if you had to pay for a song twice if you wanted it on your computer and your iPod?

Nice argument, except you can't compare songs to data. A more convincing argument would be to compare data to your water utility service. Would you pay more because you have a pool attached to your pipe? However, we know how water bills tend to go when a pool is attached... same thing for carriers. Only difference is that we pay the all we can eat data, where as the water company charges you by the cubic meter.

 

[Bodhi395]

Umm, posters are mixing bandwidth (rate) with monthly totals (amount).

A laptop has traditionally used more bandwidth during use because it has a faster processor. Supporting a high rate of transfer costs the carrier far more than trickles of data that add up over a long time.

E.g. A single laptop user is downloading files at 3 Mb/sec. He's using a huge portion (1/3) of the available 9 Mb/sec bandwidth (rate) assigned to an older tower. If he stops after about an hour = ~ 1GB total transfer.

OTOH, let's say there are 200 instant messaging users on the same tower, each sending and receiving 50 char messages twice a minute 24 hours a day. Together all 200 people are using almost no tower bandwidth because of their slow rates, but still end up with 2GB total a month.

So how do you bill these users fairly? Who requires the most network resources? Clearly the higher bandwidth users cost many times more in infrastructure requirements than lower bandwidth users do, even if the latter end up with higher total amounts over a month.

However, carriers don't monitor each user's bandwidth usage, they add up transfer totals. So they have to assume that tethered laptops will be using more expensive bandwidth.

An added glitch these days is that smartphones are getting more and more powerful and also use more bandwidth for video etc.

Personally, I'd hate to be in charge of figuring out contract plans 🙂

I think this argument fails because if a person is tethering and using 1 GB an hour, they will burn through the 2 GB limit in two hours. After that, they will be paying extremely high overage rates, which will then deter them from continuing to use that high bandwidth. So, while they may be using much higher bandwidth for a very short period of time, having the 2 GB restriction will prevent that from being a problem.

 

[DanSullivan]

Bait and Switch

I very much want to know how I can be part of an organized effort to oppose mid-contract tethering charges.

While I think tethering charges are stupid, and data limits are smarter, I have no problem with a provider including a tethering charge in a new contract. I even have no problem with making people pay a tethering charge in order to upgrade to a device with a higher data speed. After all, the old contract was for the old speed.

When I signed up (with T-Mobile) I very pointedly asked if I could tether my laptop to my phone. It was the T-Mobile reps themselves who told me I could do this, before I signed up for the plan. They said that there was an app for it that would appear right on my phone, so I wouldn't have to hunt for it or anything. They said T-Mobile doesn't support tethering, which is fine, as I don't need support. However, they clearly did allow tethering, and on the strength of that understanding, I committed myself to a two year contract on a 3G phone.

I also set up my email through the phone, using a gmail account. I am suddenly unable to send emails, as Google doesn't allow me to send emails from my laptop via WIFI, but only through my phone. In my 18 months so far, I never once went over 5 gigabytes and rarely went over 2 gigabytes. Suddenly, however, my tethering has been cut off. (To make matters worse, it was cut off in the middle of work I was doing.)

The T-Mobile rep said something about the contract, and I'm sure there is some fine print somewhere that says they can screw their customers in this way. However, contrary to what T-Mobile (and, apparently, Verizon and AT&T) try to make us believe, every first-year law student knows that the thing we sign is not the actual contract, but merely evidence of the contract. The actual contract is the reasonable understanding between the parties.

Like so many others, I signed a contract with the understanding that I could tether my phone to my laptop. I don't need to watch videos or make high demands on bandwidth, but I do need to send and receive email, upload and download simple HTML files, etc. Aside from needing these things, the important thing is that I had a contractual right to do these things - a right that T-Mobile has illegally abrogated.

Personally, I think T-Mobile wants to suck more before AT&T takes over, so customers don't complain of the drop in service. After all, the provider with the highest customer satisfaction rate is being taken over by the provider with the lowest. Nothing against the wonderful I-phone, but I had AT&T before I went to T-Mobile. This is the kind of thing I would expect from AT&T.

Contrary to

 

[drb1992]

Because they can.

this

 

[Nioxic]

here in denmark tethering is just regular data-price.. <3

 

[mkrishnan]

I think this argument fails because if a person is tethering and using 1 GB an hour, they will burn through the 2 GB limit in two hours. After that, they will be paying extremely high overage rates, which will then deter them from continuing to use that high bandwidth. So, while they may be using much higher bandwidth for a very short period of time, having the 2 GB restriction will prevent that from being a problem.

I think the missing piece is that AT&T (and other providers) do not build their data network to support the maximum volume of data that they offer with their plans. Take me as a typical user who "pays for" 2GB of data right now (no tethering). I use 400-700MB a month -- somewhere around 20-35% of my "allotment." I don't think I've ever used more than 60% of what I paid for. I'm not atypical. If anything, there are many users who pay for data and use even less than I did.

Forget tethering for a moment. What I'm saying is that, if I and each of those other smartphone users went out of our way to actually USE 2GB of data each month that they're paying for, every month, just from their phones and not via tethering, the data network would perform terribly, because this is a lot more load than it's designed for. It can't handle that, whereas it can handle the average 400 or 500 or 600 MB that the 2GB users pay for.

What tethering would do is shift that average up substantially, without giving the provider any magical way to handle the additional bandwidth.

This is the same effect as when there's an emergency and everyone gets on their cell phone at the same time and many cannot successfully place a call. And the same thing would happen if everyone started talking on their phone all the time and started actually using the 5000 or 6000 rollover minutes they've collected.

It's dishonest, sure, but that's the way that these data networks are marketed almost everywhere, outside of a few places where data is billed on actual quantity used. I'm not saying AT&T shouldn't have a network that can actually handle every smartphone user using at least 2GB of data per month. I'm just saying they don't have one, and so, it's not a "free" proposition to them, that they can provide the tethering for free and it would not have a cost impact to them.

EDIT: If you really wanted to engage in civil disobedience around this, you could start a campaign of trying to get every smartphone user to use all the minutes / GB of data they pay for. If you could actually do it, you'd create a mess.

 

[stu.h]

The network itself cannot differentiate between an iPhone using data or a computer using data.

It can be distinguished by any carrier that wants to find out though. That's how they catch people.