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Shouldn't Apple be taken to task for the same thing? They should allow tethering apps on iPhone!

Apple doesn't lease the spectrum or set the usage rules. Apple made tethering available long before AT&T let it happen.

My concern is the fine. 1.2 million? For Verizon? That's ridiculously low. Fines need to be painful to change corporate behavior. That's why the FDA fines drug companies BILLIONS.

So if you have a plan that pays for a fixed amount of bandwidth, you are allowed to tether other devices? Why, that sounds downright fair! Not in the DNA of AT&T.

Jim

Gotta say I've never quite figured out all this 'preventing' of tethering. If you get 2GB of data a month on your phone contract, why should it matter how you use it? Once you hit your limit the carrier wins by getting more money of you anyway. If you've used it all by tethering your iPad or laptop to get Internet then you either stop or pay for more. Cant see how the carrier would lose out here.

My biggest issue was always with the fact that even carriers that allow tethering often charge extra for it if using an iPhone but Android phones generally are able to do it free - if they could find an app for it.

GrumpyTrucker, on 31 July 2012 - 09:08 PM, said:

The carriers know that people don't use the full 2GB (or whatever) of data on the phone because it's harder to use the full amount of what they pay for. So most people only use a few MB, but if it was made easier to use all of the data sold to them by tethering, (and using what you already paid for) then the networks would actually have to upgrade their systems to be able to handle the bandwidth the sold. They don't want to do that, so they just charge you twice for the data if you want to use it.

This is like selling you a gallon of water you can drink from through a stirring straw, but then charge you more if you want to use a cup. You already paid for the water, but now they want to control how fast you drink it. The FCC needs to make the fines much, much bigger. This is just a slap on the wrist for Verizon.

SuperMatt, on 31 July 2012 - 03:19 PM, said:

Nope -- in fact, this has absolutely nothing to do with the current crop of iPhones. According to the article, the band at issue is in the 700MHz range; if you take a look at Apple's tech specs for the iPhone, it does not use that frequency at all.

I'm pretty sure that the 700MHz range is used mostly by LTE phones. If you think about it, this entirely explains why Verizon eliminated all unlimited data plans, shuffled their plans around to require all new data customers to basically buy their data in blocks, and then specified that you could tether "for free" on these new plans... basically, they had no choice in the matter.

This post has been edited by zarmanto: 01 August 2012 - 06:06 AM

drdreric, on 31 July 2012 - 03:36 PM, said:

You're not kidding -- especially if you look at this in the context of the original purchase price for Verizon's C Block spectrum: 4.7 billion.