And recall just how badly mobile phones stagnated before the iPhone and Android. That's carrier control at work.
The sooner these guys become reduced to dumb pipes, the better.
Bullshit. Don't dumb down the argument just because it serves your personal desires.
Tethering completely upsets the usage models. Their choice is then either to increase prices for everyone, or, if it remains relatively rare, increase the prices for the few. They chose the latter.
That said, it would be nice to have explicit limits at different price points, regardless of how you're using it. They don't seem to be doing this, though, even on AT&T where you're specifically paying for a given amount of bandwidth. You have to pay again.
So, parent was hyperbolic, but not bullshit.
I haven't signed up for a plan that claimed unlimited since the 90s. Maybe organizations around here are just more rational?
However I do have a 5GB plan on my smartphone. In an average month I use around 500MB, because there's only so much you can do on a smartphone, and they know it, but they monitor the curve and provide enough excess that I know that if I really needed it for a period, I could use it. They also sell data sticks for PCs, and they charge much more for lower caps, because of course they know that you'll use it.
My gym membership costs something like $19 a month. Technically I could go every open minute of every day, hogging equipment and space. So could everyone else. Of course then the gym could host a membership count in the dozens instead of in the many hundreds, and my real cost would be significantly higher.
The only way they'd be forced to increase prices for everyone is if they were breaking even. And there isn't a usage model in existence that makes a $20 tethering charge on top of a $15 200MB data plan even remotely reasonable.
Don't come up with flimsy rationalizations just because it serves your personal desires.
You mean as a whole company? Ha, that's a riot.
If selective customers cost a business disproportionately, they target those customers or fire them as customers. Get used to it because it's how the real world works.
>Don't come up with flimsy rationalizations just because it serves your personal desires.
I'm a data user, not provider. I gain no benefit by extra costs, caps, and overage fees. Those things hurt me instead of help me.
I'm also rational, however, and I have the capacity to separate my selfish desires ("I want everything free and everything limitless and perfect!") from the reality.
Whatever the case, you are strangely attempting to justify carrier pricing schemas through customer costs alone, as if the carriers were driven by sheer necessity rather than the desire to exploit their leverage in a deficiently competitive market. Maybe that's not what you're suggesting. If it is, my breaking even point still stands. If it isn't, and you agree that the pricing schemas are driven by leverage exploitation, then my larger point that carriers will abuse their power to the detriment of the public still stands.
I'll grant you one thing, which is that your "usage models" argument is sufficient to explain why tethering restrictions exist at all. But it's neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the specific pricing schemes, which I chalk up to leverage exploitation. And don't try to tell me carriers would never exploit their customers--they have an established and unambiguous record of doing exactly that.
I'll be leaving this conversation now, since I'm pretty sure you're in this to attack me rather than have a genuine discussion. Take care!
That people actually fell for that blend of trolling, actually up-arrowing, is a sad indictment of Hacker News. I was sure everyone was pretty accustomed to that cheap tactic by now.