Class action lawsuits only ever really benefit the plaintiff counsel.
While I doubt cash rewards would be possible, simply removing the data cap would be an impressive victory.
I'm more interested in seeing that the new plans don't raise my costs for capped plan that provides the amount of bandwidth I need. If I use 2.5gb a month on my unlimited for 29.99 plan. if my wife uses 1.5gb, then the new shared everything plan raises my bill by ~20 dollars without adding any real value. I don't need unlimited talk and text.
I had a Sprint 4G hotspot with unlimited data. Until one month they decided to change my plan to 5GB with big overage charges. They "announced" this change by slipping a notice in the PDF ebills I never once downloaded. After $200 in overage charges (which I disputed for hours, only to be repeatedly told I was given "valid" notice) I cancelled the service. Fuck Sprint. I should mention this occurred right at the same…
:) The sad part is they got a "free" $200 from you. I don't think they mind losing you as a customer!
Oh they should. Word-of-mouth will cost more than $200 in potential customers from Sprint because of this person and their experience.
Charging for tethering is stupid anyway, as people are just using the bandwidth they are paying for. The only thing I detest more is that AT&T forces me to pay for text messages that I didn't even want.
You can call AT&T and tell them to turn off text messages entirely. I did that a long time ago. I use iMessage 98% of the time, and the other 2% goes through my Google Voice SMS, so I no longer need the ability to receive in-bound SMS on the AT&T number. It's a move I've never regretted, and I'm thrilled to longer give a single cent to AT&T for absurdly exorbitant text messages.
Can I really do that? I'm being serious, I would love to turn texting off.
Yes, it's $29.99/month to enable the Sprint Hotspot. They disable the built-in tethering in Android and hide most tethering apps from the Play store. That said, you can tether over USB or bluetooth with PdaNet or FoxFi without paying any fees or rooting the phone.
I just read the other day that if you disable the tethering on Sprint's website and only enable it on days that you need it, they actually pro-rate the $29.99/month charge to only the days that you enable or use it. So it comes out to $1/day rather than the whole $30/month. Still haven't confirmed that, but I need to look into it.
Yes, that's correct. I've tried the official Sprint Wi-Fi tethering on an HTC Evo 4G for a couple of days and I was only charged for those days. The device supports up to eight wireless connections. Setup was over the phone and was effective immediately. The last time I did this was in early 2010 and the experience was flawless. It's overall not worth the money to me, though, to leave it enabled permanently. There are some USB tethering apps that require a little client-side setup but they've worked for me as a casual single client solution.
I genuinely do wonder whether or not this will change anything for (current) Apple customers. As the iPhone/iPad are non-LTE, CDMA-only devices; I don't foresee this ruling impacting the current restrictions that bar the entry-level 2GB data plans from having tethering support.
For the most part, you're right. There is one exception: The Verizon 3rd-gen iPads have LTE. The cheapest prepaid plan is $20/month for 1GB of data, and it comes with tethering.
Agreed. So is Apple's charging for media feeds on an iPhone that I read over my own bandwidth, on my own device, from a 3rd party I have a private relationship with. Yet that stands somehow.