31–40 of 73 posts
Looks like Google is becoming more and more closed as the day goes on. Where is your open-source god now?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My Desire HD does that as well, as do most (all?) other Android mobiles I've seen in Greece. However, we don't have unlimited data plans, we only have ones that cost 0.10 cents (yes, cents, apparently) per megabyte for overage.
€1 per gigabyte is pretty reasonable as overage charges go...
The Galaxy S goes beyond tethering and has a Mobile AP feature which just turns the phone into a wifi access point that runs NAT in front of the 3g modem. People I know who still have 'unlimited' data plans have used this for weeks to provide internet to their whole household in the absence of working cable. I assume this feature is removed in the US carrier-modified firmware builds?
It's still there in the Sprint version (Epic 4G), but you have to pay Sprint for the privilege. Alternatively, there are various 3rd-party firmwares which provide Wifi tethering for free. Ultimately these actions may drive free tethering a bit out of the mainstream, but no serious user is going to be deterred by removal from the Android market.
Why do carriers care if I'm accessing my paid-for data via the phone's interface or a tethered computer? It makes no sense to me.
Combination of two factors. A) the obvious one, that they are overselling their network capacity; and B) that given A, it is much better to reclaim bandwidth by fucking over the 0.1% of tetherers by discriminating against them at the margin than it is to fuck over 100% of normal users by throttling/changing pricing plans/etc. The carriers have put themselves into a corner where they have to make someone unhappy. All…
Seriously? Two lousy gigabytes a month is "overselling"? That's, say, three hours at 200KB/s. Per month.
I find that difficult to believe, except in the very most crowded areas.
Average consumers, who don't have the slightest clue what rooting is or why they'd want to do it, just use the tethering app installed by the carrier, or nothing at all.
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I don't know where it's coming from, but I can no longer get the market to install a couple tethering apps that I once could (US, Verizon, original Droid). I'm rooted, so it doesn't matter, but this is definitely happening.
In fact, something most forget about android, you don't even need to be rooted to still install the applications, just download them from the companies website and you can install on your own. Unless you're on AT&T, who disabled that choice on their phones.
Tethering is built into Android from Version 2.3 (or even 2.3), no marketplace apps needed. Anyway, I don't understand what Google is supposed to do if carriers choose to disable it. Maybe customers should be looking into other carriers if they don't like the way their carriers conduct business.
There are no carriers in the US that don't play these games. Sprint is a little better about not limiting the stuff they label as Unlimited, but they still charge for tethering, have absurd overage fees if you're not on an unlimited plan, and still have Sprint/OEM specific Android builds.
I'm not sure this matters much. To use one of these apps you have to root your phone. Anyone who knows to do that knows you can sideload apks. Average consumers, who don't have the slightest clue what rooting is or why they'd want to do it, just use the tethering app installed by the carrier, or nothing at all.
Why do carriers care if I'm accessing my paid-for data via the phone's interface or a tethered computer? It makes no sense to me.
The real reason is that for years they have overcharged corporate customers for tethering plans and they don't want to lose that revenue. Same reason why sms is so expensive per GB, basically because they can.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are no carriers in the US that don't play these games. Sprint is a little better about not limiting the stuff they label as Unlimited, but they still charge for tethering, have absurd overage fees if you're not on an unlimited plan, and still have Sprint/OEM specific Android builds.
I haven't had any charges on T-Mobile as of yet. That being said I've only used the hotspot and tethering a handful of times so I may not have hit some unforeseen limit.
Last month I went over 5 GB for the first time (5.5 GB) but speeds were not dropped.