How everyone benefits from Verizon’s FCC-mandated free tethering
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
I have no compunction in getting tethering for free, either from wired Play Store apps, or the root-only hotspot apps. You are simply circumventing a system that charges you twice for the same service. It’s no different than sending an IM instead of an expensive SMS.
Tethering charges are nothing more than a naked cash grab. And phone companies wonder why they're hated...
5 gig is 5 gig, regardless of the device consuming it.
Netflix charges me the same monthly fee whether I use it or not, is that fair? After all, on their end they only pay license holders per-stream (AFAIK).
You aren't paying twice for the same thing because the normal data plan explicitly didn't allow tethering.
However there is an additional fee if you want to use that water to water you lawn, it costs an extra $30 a month to have the water directed to the lawn.
However when industrious home owners decides to water their lawn by hand from sink water and avoid the extra $30 dollars a month the water company cuts their service.
Do you have a problem with the water company segmenting their market in this fashion?
Adobe Photoshop is available to college students at a deep discount. Hobbyists who are not in school have to pay more for the exact same product. That's a little uncool, but is it unethical?
Which is a completely artificial and needless distinction. The phones have the necessary hardware and software and have for years. And that's where the outrage comes from - there is no difference between 5gb transferred over a tethered device and 5gb transferred over the device natively.
They're double dipping. Adding no value and expecting more money for it. And everyone knows it.
This might even be remotely acceptable if the wireless marketplace were in the least bit open. It is not. I can't possibly be the only person to notice that the major carriers plans are almost mirror images of each other.
No, but in a competitive market we would expect it to because competitors will lower their prices in line with their costs to stay in business. At least, that's the theory.
When you have companies competing on who can charge the most you have an indication that there is a lack of real competition.
Yes. Verizon and other wireless telecoms have built their businesses on the back of a limited, public resource (namely, wireless spectrum) leased from the government (and therefore the people) of the United States. Therefore, they have a moral (should also be legal, but isn't at the moment) responsibility to act in an ethical manner.
If this were a market without such barriers to entry, I would say that they're free to do whatever they want, because competitors would enter the market and force them to change their policies. But when it comes to wireless telecoms, it's not possible for such competitors to materialize.
I believe that you should be able to purchase data and share it amongst as many devices as you want (a small activation fee per cellular device may be acceptable, but nothing of the sort should exist for tethering, since there is no perceptible difference for the carriers) . This is how it works for wired internet, and I don't see why wireless should be any different (with the exception of any wireless specific network management, but that's not at issue here).
From: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Wireless-Settles-...
In other words, the FCC took action and finally enforced 2008 rules when they knew Verizon was already changing their ways -- without FCC involvement. Meanwhile, the FCC is rumored to be ready to sign off on Verizon's marketing relationship with the cable industry, despite the serious anti-competitive and coverage issues that deal raises. This tethering ruling could be a way to pretend to appear "pro consumery" before approving the Verizon cable deal.
The FCC: even when they do something superficially populist, on the big things they're in the incumbents' pockets.
"It is not clear that Verizon can differentiate between limited and unlimited plans through this interface — it might just look for a tethering plan flag. This could mean a free for all with unlimited users, tethering as they please."
I'm not sure if they're being extremely optimistic here, or I simply don't understand what the author is saying. Free for all with unlimited users? There might be some sort of technical problem to solve to prevent unlimited users from tethering, but my guess is that Verizon will do whatever it takes to force us to pay, if they can.
I'm more than annoyed, and will probably be either switching carriers or just getting a separate wimax device soon.
My plan is arguably a grey area - it's "unlimited", but only the first 5 gigs are at full speed.
What I fail to understand is why "data" has become the new golden ticket? In the past, when voice was all anyone cared about, we had a relatively competitive market. Features such as rollover minutes, family plans, and much more were offered.
For example, I have a 300 minute plan, but have maxed out at 5000 minutes now because I simply don't talk on the phone ( Rollover ). Maybe in the past, this was different and cost them more to send data across the wire — but now it is the same, voice data and "data" data moves across the same pipes as far as I know.
If the telco's had to be competitive when it was voice only and data was a luxury — and if data and voice are no different — why are the telco's having such a hard time with this?
If a plan has 300 minutes of talk time, how about I get 300MB of data time. If I don't use it all, then give me rollover data just like they do with voice.
These telco's basically have one competitor, that being the cable company. From what I understand, DSL had new subscriber counts that were so low I was shocked — something like a few thousand new accounts in total.
If they want to compete with cable, right now, they can't, but as soon as their speeds come in-line with cable, they have the potential to be your phone and internet. And unlike cable, who only sends out one bill, the telco gets to send out a bill to every single person. Now, everyone has their own Internet connection and is paying for it.
From what I understand, telco's are paying pennies per GB on this data from their upstream. Places like Netflix drop the data as close to their doorstep as possible, at which point, there is zero bandwidth cost for the ISP to shuffle those bits around to users. If I use all of my 500GB a month, that costs the cable co. well under a dollar in upstream fees. Yes, they have overheads with their equipment and business operations, but that can't possibly amount to the overage fee's they charge, let alone the fact it costs me $70.00 a month or more for a decent Internet connection.
They are going to over-charge themselves out of the game. As soon as wifi is ubiquitous and phones learn how to jump from one AP to another, things will get interesting. If I were closer, there is an ISP called Sonic that is bringing 1 Gbps symmetric Fiber to people's homes for a very reasonable fee, around $50.00 a month I believe.
Look at AT&T and SMS messages. Apple releases iMessage, making there no need for SMS for iPhone to iPhone users. But I still have to keep SMS running for those people who don't have an iPhone. Apple could solve a lot of this by opening up iMessage so others can use the protocol — which I believe Steve Jobs said was supposed to happen. If Android could talk to iPhone over iMessages, it would wake up the telco's very quick. The only remaining need would be the tweekers and their pay as you go phones, and banks, credit cards, and other pure txt services that send alerts. Though they could simply put in an iMessage gateway — but I have a feeling that would take years for them to implement.