Water, electricity, natural gas, gasoline. You pay for what you use. Somehow with voice and data it becomes a gambling event where you make a guess, spin a wheel, and then you pay.

Does the third Gigabyte cost a company more to provide than the first? Do the megabytes that are over your contract amount cost more to provide than the ones that are not? Does providing 2 gigabytes for 2 different machines cost more than providing the same amount to one machine? No, no, and no.

The reason this article exists is because the phone carriers are running their businesses like a Las Vegas casino instead of a utility company. I think that should be noted in the article.

I tether and feel the charge for tethering should not be allowed if the data plan is capped. What does it matter whether you use 4GB from a phone, tablet or laptop? Cell providers are just greedy. I can’t think of any other reason for a monthly charge just for the ability to tether. They charge because they can. Consumers have no choice but to pay or not pay. With being connected becoming more a part of everyday life its difficult to avoid being taken advantage of.

I hope one day a cell provider decides to drop the tethering charge. Then all the others will have to follow.

Anyone know of any devices that can Bluetooth tether and also take advantage of the higher speeds of Bluetoth 3.0/4.0?

What people need is what people need, price just determines how easy it is for them to get it or whether they have to compromise.

While competition and availability determine what people have to choose from.

Much of the problem is that there’s the minimum charge for the services being provided, which explains why the smaller initial data usage deals tend to cost more per MB.  It’s just that minimum charge reflects less on larger data package deals and thus the discrepancy.

Like with most things we buy, the larger the quantity the generally lower the unit price goes.

It’s also true that the infrastructure is limited and for that they use a combination of pricing and data caps to set the upper limit of what people can use before they either get throttled or cut off.

While part of the costs involved is also the what they charge for maintaining the system and continuing to expand it.

However, this is not to say everything the carriers do is on the up and up.  They do manipulate the system to their advantage and that accounts for most of the inconsistencies, especially in the handling of overages and finding things to charge for.  They just hide much of this within legit considerations that makes it hard to point out legally and obviously where they are abusing consumers.

My previous point was just to say that SMS/Texting is where they do this the worst versus what it actually costs them and the best example of the abuse.

I agree that text and SMS is the worst in terms of price gouging by the carriers.

I disagree about people having absolute data needs. To me it’s all negotiable.

There are much simpler, fairer ways to to keep everyone from using up all of the carrier’s data bandwidth. I think we both agree on that.

There is absolutely no technological or economic justification for forcing people to guess in advance how many minutes (of data or voice) that they will use and then penalizing them if they go over and keeping the extra money if they go under. That’s just legalized robbery as far as I am concerned.

Just get a 3G tablet.

Where I live, a data transfer only SIM costs around 10-15€ monthly (prepaid or contract), several carriers offer it. Up to 15mbps, no caps.

I don’t see a reason for tethering if you plan to be connected to the net all the time, plus I find an all-in-one concept much more convenient and user friendly.

Too bad that, for example, Asus has managed to mess up its 3G tablet releases. Personally, I’m not getting a tablet if it doesn’t have 3G inbuilt. It’s not about the price at that point, it’s about preference and convenience.

Blackberry Playbook tethers over bluetooth perfectly. it is the only tethering of its kind that I know of

wifi can also idle these days. I have left a seasoned N800 sitting with wifi on for a day and still had plenty of battery left. And to be honest, to really settle this one would need a bunch of devices with different capabilities and test them all under controlled conditions to see how the various options affect battery life.

The up to 4gb is a marketing ploy.  Really they want and expect you to use only 500mb – 1gb on a phone so tethering will mean you actually use that 4gb you have paid for.  They can’t have you doing that now!

In the US, T-Mobile does use the throttle method for those who go over their limit.  Though that may end if and when they finally merge with AT&T.

While there’s growing system of making consumers aware of their data usage with monitoring services to show how much data is being used.

Data cut offs help prevent overages for those carriers unwilling to provide service after the limit.  Though not fool proof to prevent overages.  So a lot of effort has gone to giving phones monitoring apps that can also set threshold usage alarms and auto cut offs from the phone itself, and/or set options like allow data only with WiFi, as well as decide whether roaming is ever used.

Main problem is the wireless network in the US isn’t yet up to providing service to everyone at once and the max capacity is far less than the hard lines.  All of which is exasperated by how so many people are starting to stop using land lines and use their cell for everything.

This is easing as they set up the newer networks but upgrades in the US can take over a decade to saturate throughout the country.  So we’re behind the curve on making the system as good as many European countries seem to have it now.

Though there is some price gouging involved and not as much competition as there should be that does help the situation either.

At least for germany, there are only 4 Providers/Networks, not 4 big and a few little ones, 4 in total. there are a lot of, what in some countries is called, “virtual providers” but they are basicaly just using the networks of the big 4, and offer branded or differently tailored plans.

Germany has a telecommunications regulatory agency that ensures competitivness amongst the big providers and protects consumers from price gouging. It not only deals with wireless regulation, but also landline copper / fibre / cable regulation.

It was/is responsible for auctioning off 3g/4g Frequencies to private enterprise to build telecommunication networks with and has the authority to revoke the use of these frequencies if a provider takes no effort to provide wide and reliable coverage within a reasonable timeframe.

For example, the first provider to roll out a regular operation LTE Network over here only got awarded the frequencies to do so under the stipulation that they had to provide a viable alternative to DSL Home connections in rural or low density population areas where DSL or Cable are not a viable option.

This may sound weird and “unfair” or restrictive from a free market perspective i find a lot of Americans express and tout as the best model.

But it leads to a telecommunications market in which i reliably get 12-14 MBit/s speeds on the 14.4 MBit/s HSPA network of my provider everywhere in urban areas in and around the capital of berlin where i live.

As for prices, using the practices of throttled speeds but continous service overcap detailed in my original post the price structures of my provider are as follows:

1 GB/month = 15 € ($ 20.48)
5 GB/month = 25 € ($ 34.12)
7.5 GB/month= 35 € ($ 47.77)

These are special data plans, regular cellphone plans for talking and texting usualy already cover 300 MB @7.2 MBit/s and at least on my provicer cover an ulimited talktime flatrate to cellnumbers on the same network (remember, there are only 4 in total in the country) and to EVERY landline phone number that is not a special service number with additional service charges ontop of normal calls.

It’s not odd if you factor redundancy.  Since pretty much everyone already carries a phone, which includes people using a tablet. Meaning, unless they really need the capacity of an extra data plan then that’s just extra cost for a convenience they may not even need.

While no one said there would be no reason to get a 3G-version, just that there are reasons not to and that they can outweigh the number of reasons to want to.  While the lack of convenience is minimal if they simply tether the phone that they are likely also to be carrying anyway.

Of course, there are also people who don’t really needs phones and can make due with just a 3G tablet but that doesn’t represent most consumers.

You are so right. They charge you because they
know the consumer has no choice but to pay for a service that should be for free. Here in Australia tethering has always been available for free.