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I don't get the logic of Verizon's unlimited tethering plan

  • Thread starter Thread starter caustic
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caustic

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For those of you that don't know, there's less than seldom advertised unlimited tethering plan available for people that are grandfathered in on an unlimited data plan and who upgrade to a 4G phone. It's an extra $30 a month, which I have no issue paying, since that is the very minimum I would pay home cable internet. For everyone else there's way more expensive plans, unless you use very little data. $20 for 2 gigs plan. $50 for a 5 gig mobile hotspot. Etc.

On my phone there's really only so much data I can easily use in a month. With lots of internet browsing and video watching, I can do 5-6 gigs a month. Where as with my desktop I can do that kind of traffic in a few days (one day if I'm doing a lot). I agree with and understand Verizon's belief in tiered data. I'm not saying everyone should give up their unlimited plans (as they're very great), but it seems logical to make people pay for the burden they put on the network. Just like most of us are metered for our electrical use, it never seemed fair to me that my mom paid the same amount for her 200 megs a month of data as I did for 5 or even 50. So yea, tiered data, not a bad idea, though it could stand to be cheaper for more data.

Anyway, my point is, given Verizon's logic here and their desire to charge people a bit too heavily for their data usage, why would they create and still have this unlimited tethering plan? I'm assuming that if they had their way, all of us would be moved to tiered plans; less data usage from us and more money for them. To me, this tethering plan is their way of saying "those of you who still have the better data plan, here's something infinitely better and more network crippling than what anyone else can get." If they want to cut down on rampant data usage on their network, why give this cheap way for me to use way more data (pc vs phone) than I could before? It seems very counter intuitive to me.

I mean, this is a company that sells 4G hotspots/modems that cost $80 a month for 10 gigs. With this you get unlimited for 60. Confusion.

Does this seem strange to anyone else? And no comments about "I just use pdanet." This isn't a discussion about free tethering.
 
I was under the impression that you could only get the unlimited tethering plan on 4G if you already have unlimited data now. IIRC VZW is now changing those plans of people who did use the loophole to get unlimited data to tiered plans.
 
caustic said:
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. What loophole?
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Getting unlimited data by upgrading to 4G and adding tethering. It was a way to get unlimited data after they stopped offering the plan. I was under the impression they had stopped that and had tiered tethering plans for 4G users on tiered plans and are in the process of getting the contracts changed back to tiered plans for those people who had a tiered plan but upgraded to 4G and got a tethering plan.

I know I am not making sense ;)

Because if you are on an unlimited plan part of the contract says if you want to tether you can pay $30 and add the feature to your plan, they would have to change the contract and risk you opting to say no just disconnect my contract with no ETF to make it a tiered tether option
 
I think they are trying to get money from people they might not have been able to get in the past.

Verizon knows that there are tethering apps in the market and on the web. They know that rooted Android users are able to tether for free and get away with it. I have a feeling that by offering this unlimited tethering plan to grandfathered users they are trying to get some money were they may have received none in the past. The $30 allows people to tether without worry about being caught and still gives Verizon a chance to get the unlimited $30 user up to something more realistic, to them, with a now $60 plan (Data + Hotspot).

I have a feeling that they also plan to throttle the high data users in the future so that they are less of a burden on the network. This would give them the option of throttling you in two different ways. Use too much mobile data and they can throttle you there. Use too much tethering data and they throttle you there.

Obviously, this is just speculation, but it is the only thing that I can come up with that makes any sort of sense.
 
Actually, that makes great sense. Verizon has some means to detect tethering, but there's probably lots of data they aren't sure about. That $30 plan is a great way to get the people that would be worried about possibly being caught and losing their unlimited data. Perhaps the plan will die then once they get a better way to detect tethering?

Ah well, I'm still fairly happy with $60 for unlimited high speed internet nearly anywhere in the country. I mean, you can't get something that good, especially if you live in a much more rural place.

Personally, I always thought a great way for them to detect tethering would be to check for connections to OS update servers. I mean, what would Android be doing checking for a windows update? They don't seem to though, silly them.
 
Everything about Verizon confuses me...

They can't rely on the best coverage forever. I would still be a happy customer paying $400+ a month if their customer service wasn't some of the worst I have ever dealt with.

I have been very happy with Sprint's coverage and pretty happy with T-Mobile, and both of their customer services are way, way better than Verizon. I am one of those people that am happy to pay more if I get better service, but whatever, Verizon can rip people off and give bad customer service until they aren't number 1 anymore and figure out why!

BTW, the same plan I had on Verizon for $400+ a month cost me $240 on T-Mobile, and I have a great plan for my sprint phone also (best buy mobile employee plan)
 
If you have a 4G phone, yes. Just call customer service and explain that you heard about a $30 unlimited tethering plan available to those grandfathered in with unlimited data. It's not advertised, and you might have to call back and try a different customer service rep if they don't know what you're talking about, but trust me, it's there.

I read that it's feature code #76153, but I haven't tried that.
 
caustic said:
Actually, that makes great sense. Verizon has some means to detect tethering, but there's probably lots of data they aren't sure about. That $30 plan is a great way to get the people that would be worried about possibly being caught and losing their unlimited data. Perhaps the plan will die then once they get a better way to detect tethering?

Ah well, I'm still fairly happy with $60 for unlimited high speed internet nearly anywhere in the country. I mean, you can't get something that good, especially if you live in a much more rural place.

Personally, I always thought a great way for them to detect tethering would be to check for connections to OS update servers. I mean, what would Android be doing checking for a windows update? They don't seem to though, silly them.
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Silly? No. Barely being managed by government? Yes.

You are referring to a technology called deep packet inspection and Verizon is chomping at the bit to get that without your consent.

MediaPost Publications Verizon Attacks FTC's Proposal For Deep-Packet Inspection 02/23/2011

Think of Carrier IQ on steroids. Think of the ultimate eavesdropping technology that Verizon wants because they really want to provide their own net. Along with a few others, Verizon wants to tier the actual internet, and charge you based on where you surf.

I am not making this up. And the battle against it is called net neutrality.

Do not give up your packet privacy if Verizon claims that's about tethering, because it's about something much greater and not good at all.

Where you go on the net and why is your business only.
 
I'm one of those with the grandfathered unlimited data plan. I have the option of adding tether for $30 / month but choose not to. I wouldn't run my home electronics on tether as the others in my house may be kinda upset when I'm not home ;).

I think my issue with the two plans are that the prices for low usage are too high. I think something like $30 per month for 10-15 GB of data (tethered or not) would probably satisfy most users. Need to connect a laptop and attend a webinar, catch a netflix show while waiting in a Dr's office, etc.

Then hit the real data hogs something like $5 a gig over that limit. It is really these folks that are causing the problems. If bet if someone got a bill for $455 ($30 for 1st 15GB, $5 per for the next 85GB) just for their data they wouldn't be on here with a screenshot bragging about how they used 100GB last month. The would be on here looking for the best ISP in their area.
 
Google and Apple are both pushing cloud services as all you need.

One user is hitting around 50 GB/month without tethering or torrenting or pirating - in fact, he's not even downloading. He's streaming from his legal Pandora and Netflix accounts. I've seen his monthly data breakdowns.

Then, on Apple, there's the same issue.

Confessions of an iPhone Data Hog - WSJ.com

Maybe carriers like customers calling each other hogs, I don't know, but maybe that sets the climate to blame each other.

The truth is that the service providers and carriers have promised that people can use their phones a certain way. In fact, they have been in an advertising war about it for a few years.

But now that they claim to have problems delivering on that, it's not their fault, Oh No. It's your neighbor's fault, he's a hog.

I'm just saying that it sounds like divide and conquer to me.
 
EarlyMon said:
Google and Apple are both pushing cloud services as all you need.

One user is hitting around 50 GB/month without tethering or torrenting or pirating - in fact, he's not even downloading. He's streaming from his legal Pandora and Netflix accounts. I've seen his monthly data breakdowns.

Then, on Apple, there's the same issue.

Confessions of an iPhone Data Hog - WSJ.com

Maybe carriers like customers calling each other hogs, I don't know, but maybe that sets the climate to blame each other.

The truth is that the service providers and carriers have promised that people can use their phones a certain way. In fact, they have been in an advertising war about it for a few years.

But now that they claim to have problems delivering on that, it's not their fault, Oh No. It's your neighbor's fault, he's a hog.

I'm just saying that it sounds like divide and conquer to me.
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You are absolutely correct, I hadn't thought about cloud services. I'll eat my humble pie:o.

I guess my point was that someone pirating movies, games, software, music etc. and bragging about how they used 100+GB needs to somehow be outed as they give users that may be using the same bandwidth legitimately a bad name. I will stand by my point that I believe most folks using wireless data are under 15GB / month with obvious consideration the traveling business people and single people, and Verizon prices the first couple of gigs extremely high which seems to gouge their customers. I don't have any commercially available apps, but I do have hundreds of thousands (if not millions, never really counted) of lines of code in use in a few different companies, so piracy really gets to me.
 
Yep, I have written and fielded well over a million source lines of code myself. The overall total includes public and private sector code as well as FOSS. So I hear you.

Bottom line is that piracy is everyone's concern, so if you see anyone here bragging about piracy, please tap the !Report button next to their post and let us sort them out. ;)

Some sources say that 1% of the users consume about half the data. That doesn't mean that they're all hogs - maybe it just means they've adopted the cloud early.

I just read an article today that the Japanese have asked Google to cool it with the cloud chatter. They get it, and bandwidth is expensive there.

I get unlimited everything on Sprint for $110/month. Tethering up to 8 devices is $30/month, but that's $5 more than my ISP, so I don't bother. Some say that I pay too much, I don't know. I remember every month being a headache with a la carte plans and always paying more than I expected, no matter what. AT&T hit me for $8k in one month and I never left the country.

So I absolutely favor flat rate plans that include everything except the hassle. Everything else that they do really does mystify me.
 
EarlyMon said:
Yep, I have written and fielded well over a million source lines of code myself. The overall total includes public and private sector code as well as FOSS. So I hear you.

Bottom line is that piracy is everyone's concern, so if you see anyone here bragging about piracy, please tap the !Report button next to their post and let us sort them out. ;)

Some sources say that 1% of the users consume about half the data. That doesn't mean that they're all hogs - maybe it just means they've adopted the cloud early.

I just read an article today that the Japanese have asked Google to cool it with the cloud chatter. They get it, and bandwidth is expensive there.

I get unlimited everything on Sprint for $110/month. Tethering up to 8 devices is $30/month, but that's $5 more than my ISP, so I don't bother. Some say that I pay too much, I don't know. I remember every month being a headache with a la carte plans and always paying more than I expected, no matter what. AT&T hit me for $8k in one month and I never left the country.

So I absolutely favor flat rate plans that include everything except the hassle. Everything else that they do really does mystify me.
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I would prefer flat rate, as that is what I have now. You and I agree on more than we disagree, and I think on this discussion we are more on the same side with different solutions to parsing the pirating users from the legitimate ones.

I see your points about paying for data, and you pay roughly what I pay for data. I think Verizon's current solution only punishes their new users, however. I think it is something like $20 for 200MB or $30 for 2GB. That is highway robbery.

I think the low GB users should be given a break relative to the high bandwidth users. Where that price point is is the difficult question. Is it $10 for 2GB, $40 for unlimited? It could be anything anywhere. I just wish that low bandwidth users weren't paying the price for high bandwidth users.
 
Oh? What about talk time? Low talkers aren't paying for the high talkers, are they? But they get plenty penalized for going over their minutes.

It's all digital data and bandwidth is bandwidth and tower capacity is tower capacity.

I think that this is all a very interesting problem that the carriers invented. Like when they charged high sms rates, not telling people that the character limitation per message was something that they did to fit the texts into the unused space between voice frames and it cost them zero bandwidth. Just mentioning that so we're all clear what I mean by term, invented problem.

And I missed entirely where we differ on our approach to pirates. Sorry if I came across as too heavy but I just don't tolerate it.
 
EarlyMon said:
Oh? What about talk time? Low talkers aren't paying for the high talkers, are they? But they get plenty penalized for going over their minutes.

It's all digital data and bandwidth is bandwidth and tower capacity is tower capacity.

I think that this is all a very interesting problem that the carriers invented. Like when they charged high sms rates, not telling people that the character limitation per message was something that they did to fit the texts into the unused space between voice frames and it cost them zero bandwidth. Just mentioning that so we're all clear what I mean by term, invented problem.

And I missed entirely where we differ on our approach to pirates. Sorry if I came across as too heavy but I just don't tolerate it.
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I hate all of verizon's pricing plans. Any carrier charging $0.25 for an SMS is BS as this is the least stressful on their network. Same thing with voice, as we have had a month or two during family emergencies where we have racked up over $200 in voice overage charges. That is the contract I signed so I paid, not happily, but I did.

My problem in this discussion is with the way Verizon prices data. $20 for 200MB or $30 for 2GB is too much.

I already have ulimited data at $30 a month, so this isn't a selfish rant. This is my opinion about what would be realistic for casual users vs. hardecore users.

Come up with one plan that fits the data usage of the largest group of users, and another for the major consumers. YES, I am advocating a tiered plan, but one that makes sense based on customers usage.
 
I'd love to see Verizon come up with the types of plans that the non-contract companies have. $50 or $60 for unlimited everything is the way to go. Odd thing is I think you can still get an unlimited data plan with Verizon's Pay as you go service.

I'm interested to see what they are going to do in the next year when they plan to have a full 4G network and switch to "VOIP" calling 100%. Do you think we will still see calling + sms + data plans from Big Red or do you think that they will switch over to a full data plan system so that you are paying for a per GB rate? Do you think they will kill off the unlimited plans then?
 
^ I think unlimited data plans will soon be non-existent.... something that kinda bums me out. No proof or anything, just a feeling.
 
Ahh the conspiracy theories.... Android in itself is a conspiracy theory! Cheap computers with gps available to the masses? Hmm. If verizon wants my packet info, the can have it. I don't care if they see the occasional porn I look up or the hulu movie I watched. Privacy is a thing of the past, the picture is far to big to waste my life trying to view it.
 
Satires said:
Ahh the conspiracy theories.... Android in itself is a conspiracy theory! Cheap computers with gps available to the masses? Hmm. If verizon wants my packet info, the can have it. I don't care if they see the occasional porn I look up or the hulu movie I watched. Privacy is a thing of the past, the picture is far to big to waste my life trying to view it.
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The end of net neutrality is not a theory. Verizon has been quite clear with their FCC dealings on this, and it occupied the press for months.

This is not about privacy.

This is about they want to charge you for which sites you visit and to not even let you visit competitors sites.

It was that part of news you didn't pay attention to last year.

Wake up. Not a conspiracy theory - it's a new model on how to charge and control your internet access.

And Comcast already tried it, got caught, and whacked for it.

All of the big providers want the net carved up so that instead of being free after your access charges, it will operate as a private toll system.

And while many would like to argue with me about that, I would suggest you argue with your lawmakers and right now. They are putting together the votes to make this nightmare a reality.

Oh, and guess what Verizon is using as an excuse to charge you for which sites you visit?

Bandwidth hogging, their very words.

The two things are entirely and completely unrelated, but their PR has been so effective that people who have read nothing more than Verizon lies on this are now posting that they buy in to this crap.

And so is congress.

Seriously, wake up.
 
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