Sprint Customers Face 5GB Hotspot Data Cap, As of Oct. 2 222
zacharye writes "Sprint on Thursday confirmed that it will soon introduce a data cap tied to its mobile hotspot add-on for smartphone users. Currently, Sprint subscribers with compatible smartphones can pay an extra $29.99 per month for unlimited Wi-Fi tethering, which allows other devices to connect via Wi-Fi in order to utilize a Sprint phone's 3G or 4G data connection. Beginning October 2nd, the mobile hotspot add-on will be capped at 5GB of data per month."
usb tethering? (Score:2)
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I was actually planning on paying for tethering and dropping my land line internet once sprint brought 4g to my city. No more. I'll just keep using an unofficial tether program on the occasions I find it useful.
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Re:usb tethering? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was actually planning on paying for tethering and dropping my land line internet once sprint brought 4g to my city.
I feel your pain but I don't understand why the smart, otherwise technically savvy people on Slashdot seem to not understand this:
Wireless is not and will not be a replacement for wireline broadband. They are fundamentally different economically and technically.
With wireline (cable/DSL/FiOS/leased line/whatever) broadband, an ISP can cram as much data down each of those pipes as their upstream/downstream terminal gear (VDSL, DOCSIS 3.0, GPON, etc.) can handle and their upstream bandwidth can take. Bandwidth allowances to individual customers have comparatively small impact on other users, so you can get very high speeds and large data caps
With wireless, ISPs are functionally limited by their available licensed spectrum within each market area. Currently there is more thirst for cellular data than there is available spectrum, so in most cellsites in any moderately populated area, you are going to be fighting for bandwidth with everyone who is streaming HD NetFlix. You can solve that with more spectrum, but at least in the US, spectrum coasts a s**tload of money, and there is a shortage of it available to the wireless providers already. You could help the issue with more cell towers, but those cost a lot of money to put up and even if you want to spend the cash, in many areas all the tinfoil hat brigades complain about their cell service but then make carriers go through three years of environmental impact studies to put more towers up if ever.
So for practical purposes, wireless bandwidth is a much more constrained resource than wireline bandwidth is, and what each user "eats" may be taking off the plate of the next user, so that's why you get caps/throttling/whatever. There is no secret conspiracy to make wireless users' lives miserable, all the carriers have these same frustrating data policies because... they all have to deal with the same spectrum limitations, regulatory limitations, and the need to make money.
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This game they play with the data has grated on my last nerve. I will be dropping my data package this month all together, and use my phone as just that, a phone. It was great in theory, but the limitations, and greed of the companies have overshadowed it, hence I am out. Frankly, I have found I don't need it. Being unplugged is liberating. I was recalling back when nobody had cell phones, we still functioned just fine. I just need to find use for my smart phone, but I can ditch it as well if it's too big o
They are acting like the cable co used to act with (Score:2)
They are acting like the cable co used to act with routers where they said no or wanted you to pay more to use more then one system.
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DSL providers used to do this too.
The only problem is that at least Cable ISPs were in competition with DSL providers, and for a while there were a relatively many to choose from.
In the US cellphone market, you have essentially 4 providers (possibly soon to be 3) with the same data-cap policies.
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Do they still use DPI to get between your phone and music/image files so that you can't DL them without going through their shitty store?
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Do they support an Android HTC slider phone?
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Except that the cable company CAN add more hardware to increase their throughput, the cell companies have a fixed amount of bandwidth to slice up at any given time. In higher density areas or at peak usage times, more towers wouldn't help.
Stop this BS (Score:3, Insightful)
"Hi, would you like to subscribe to our unlimited bandwidth plan"
"Sure!"
"Hello again, I see you've been using some of our bandwidth, I'm afraid when we said 'unlimited' what we actually mean was 'severely and punitively limited' so your going to have to either stop or pay us a fuck ton more money"
Why the hell are corporations worldwide allowed to keep pulling this shit? If it's not a straight bait-and-switch then it's using a rather unconventional definition of unlimited, and every single time they are allowed to get away with it.
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This is only when using the hotspot addon. The data plan is still unlimited otherwise.
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Unlimited as long as you only use those ones and zeroes the way Sprint says you can.
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It is unlimited... for limited values of unlimited.
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Re:Stop this BS (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not worldwide. This is only in America, baby!
And in the UK -- at least for O2 customers.
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Seriously. I was in the local mall last month and, I shit you not, saw a big sign saying "Unlimited Voice, Text and Data*" with very small print saying "* 2GB limit on data". This word you keep using, I do not think it means what you think it means. Wish I could remember which outfit was doing it now but I remember pointing it out to the wife and laughing loudly enough it annoyed the weasel manning the kiosk.
Where is the police? Don't they patrol the mall? None of them bother to notice obvious, blatant
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Like Netflix (and others) - unlimited DVDs per month, one at a time.
Hmm... Thirty days / (minimum) two day turn around per disc = 15 discs / month max. Hardly "unlimited".
People are suckers for advertising.
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jailbreak the phone that is ok under the law (Score:3)
jailbreak the phone that is ok under the law and use a 3rd party hotspot app.
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However breaking Sprint's TOS while using Sprint isn't ok with the law.
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How is it possible to steal a service you already have? All you are doing is enabling a feature on your phone, perfectly legal. Hotspot add-on plans are nothing more than a means to double charge you for the same data service you already have.
no locking out 3th party stuff is antitrust (Score:2)
no locking out 3th party stuff and makeing you pay for the 1th party app is antitrust
DIY (Score:2)
Do we really need these telcos anyway? Wouldn't it be possible to establish a network of cheap transceivers throughout neighborhoods and cities for at least the purpose of carrying voice and video communications? Then population centers could be connected by a few larger transceivers jointly managed by both communities. Heck, I'd bet we could implement higher fidelity audio data too.
Caps are arbitrary limitations for the purpose of stealing as much profit as possible from consumers; these communications com
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"Caps are arbitrary limitations for the purpose of stealing as much profit as possible from consumers;"
That's ridiculous. Capacity will always be finite and so there will always be some kind of cap. In the past connections were so slow that you could get away without an actual transfer cap. Now, not so much. All they're doing is putting an actual number on the cap instead of selectively enforcing some ill defined limit.
If you think you can set up your own cellular network in competition, go for it. "A n
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I don't deny that bandwidth/capacity/etc is a finite resource...but you have to admit when a company says "unlimited", you think, "wow! I can use as much as I want!"
Back in the bad old days of broadband, they advertised "UNLIMITED!" without restrictions and with no mouse print.
Some companies still do this, but then they hide the language in their 12 page TOS.
If it's not unlimited, don't say it is.
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Exactly. The problem is not with caps, the problem is implying there are no caps. Everybody (in the US) seems to get mad when a company announces they're imposing a cap, but all they're doing is being honest about something that was always true.
My internet plan is advertised with a speed and an amount of data, both per month. I think it's overpriced, but it is honest.
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How is the amount of data limited? Is it a resource that has to be mined or collected?
Bandwidth (as in, data transferred per unit of time) is limited by the capacity of the network. Amount of data isn't.
What they're trying to do is limit bandwidth (which is grossly oversold) by limiting your ability to use it. Nothing to do with it being finite.
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Take the bandwidth of a network (measured in bits per second) and multiply by some customary amount of time (say a month). See that number? That's the maximum number of bits you can squeeze through the network in that time period. It's finite. Limited. It really is bandwidth, just measured over a different time period, but we like to call it an amount because the time period is so long we don't think of it as a rate.
However you want to think of it, it is limited.
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That's not a real limit. It's a useless number.
Let's say it's 10 Petabytes (completely random number). If the users only use 5 Petabytes during 29 days of the month, can they use the other 5 on the last day? No, because the real limit is the bandwidth at each moment. And if there's a month in which they only use 8, can they save the last 2 for the next month? No. Because there's nothing to be 'saved'. Either it's used or it isn't.
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That's basically what they're doing in Afghanistan: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/06/26/0322238/afghans-build-open-source-internet-from-trash [slashdot.org]
But I bet latency alone kills a bunch of applications (VoIP, gaming, etc).
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Do we really need these telcos anyway? Wouldn't it be possible to establish a network of cheap transceivers throughout neighborhoods and cities for at least the purpose of carrying voice and video communications? Then population centers could be connected by a few larger transceivers jointly managed by both communities. Heck, I'd bet we could implement higher fidelity audio data too.
Caps are arbitrary limitations for the purpose of stealing as much profit as possible from consumers; these communications companies who put on caps are basically saying: "Actually, we aren't any good at communications."
[Disclaimer: I don't really know what I'm talking about, which I'm sure someone will point out.]
To be succinct and precise, No it wouldn't. Telecommunications more than just stringing up a bunch of routers, it's a massive infrastructure undertaking, plain and simple.
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See the MondoNet project [mondonet.org] for an implementation of this idea.
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If there were a VOIP phone app for Android that worked over Sprint 3G but handed off seamlessly (in-call, no disconnect) to WiFi when in range, then we would have an alternative to Sprint's network lockin monopoly. And these price gouging limits would become pretty scarce. Competition that isn't just a cartel will do that.
it's 15659bps, nothing more (Score:3)
Ok, so please remind me why are they allowed to market these speeds as anything above 15.6kbit they are?
We need a law that says burst speeds must be quoted no more prominently than the long-term one.
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Actually, consumers have several.
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With deep pockets? No.
Collectively, consumers have vastly deeper pockets than any corporation could ever dream of, and they hold the ultimate power over regulation -- the vote. The problem is ultimately just that not enough of them care.
Getting ready for iPhone 5 maybe..? (Score:2)
Looks like they can't use that commercial anymore (Score:2)
I wish companies would stop using the word "unlimited" when they really mean "limited". Same thing goes toward coupons that say "No limitations!" but when you read the fine print it says, "Not for gift cards, furniture, clothes, anything we sell, really."
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To be fair, I didn't see anything in that ad about unlimited tethering, and the rest is still unlimited.
Sprint is just as evil as Verizon and AT&T (Score:2)
In other news, a wireless hotspot is a standard feature of Android if your vendor hasn't disabled it and several networks (e.g. T-Mobile) offer unlimited data plans at a reasonable price.
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And refuses to sign up customers in my zip code. T-Mobile: no bars. Verizon: Evil Incarnate. Sprint: Meh. AT&T: Big, Stupid, thinks they are still The Phone Company. Everyone else: Buys tower access from one of the other four.
I rarely use a cell so I'm currently on a dinky little prepaid outfit called h2o wireless. Cheap if you don't actually use a phone a lot. Throw $10 or $20 at em and the phone is live for 90 days or until you burn off the credit at $0.14/minute for voice or $0.05/text. And t
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My HTC 4G Android isn't going anywhere except Sprint, since that's the only network it will connect to. Sprint has of course locked it, which is how they're implementing this data cap and get to charge $30 extra a month to enable it.
The real question is what Android config/SW can do it anyway, despite Sprint's terms - which they're changing unilaterally now.
Just in time! (Score:2)
You can blame this on Sprint's roll-out of the iPhone 5, coming next month.
How does this affect the current Sprint commercial (Score:2)
You know, the one that claims that Sprint gives unlimited data on their network vs every other company, which is currently playing right now on my TV?
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How is this reasonable? (Score:2)
If Clear starts capping usage at 5GB, that'll be the end of their business model (since they advertise themselves as an alternative to cable or DSL).
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How much does unlimited 4G on Clear cost? Is it available in NYC?
Retroactive? What about Buffered Browsing? (Score:2)
Also, if there is no limit in downloading data to the phone itself, and the phone can link to other devices by WiFi, Bluetooth, and/or USB cable, what if you have one app that downloads data to your phone memory card, and a second app running asynchronously reads that memory card and moves data out to other local devices. And the process can be reversed to send data from other devices t
New Pro-Consumer Regulation (Score:5, Interesting)
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How about people who don't think things through shouldn't post, even anonymously?
The small text is already at overwhelming levels, and I seriously doubt there is a person in this thread that read every word of a mobile contract before signing. And even if we did waste hours reading (or days understanding) the contract, carriers could just keep adding to it until it's impenetrable again.
Unlimited nights and weekends? (Score:2)
The caps are really only needed to prevent the network from getting overloaded during peak periods. The caps don't need to apply during times of low demand.
An indiscriminate cap is a pretty clumsy way to prevent network saturation. So give us free unlimited nights and weekends.
in the mean time in Europe (Score:2)
I get FREE cellular UMTS 256/256 internet in Poland. No caps, only downside is forced reconnect every 60 minutes.
Crappy headline ... (Score:2)
While the latter makes more sense, you can't rule out the possibility of the former when talking about a company like Sprint.
Wow - expensive (Score:2)
I knew American cellular plans were costly, but holy crap that is expensive. A $30 add-on just to tether!?
That's ~more~ than I pay per month for my ENTIRE PHONE PLAN (calls, texts, data). I can use the included data in any way I want, tethered or otherwise, no add-on required. And I live in Australia which is not exactly renowned for being cheap when it comes to telecommunications...
I'm actually moving to live in the US next year and will likely be there for a couple of years at least. Seems like I'll be sp
Early Cancellation (Score:2)
If they're changing the terms in the middle of my 2 year contract, I think I could cancel service without penalty. I bought the phone and signed up for 2 years when I was offered an unlimited hotspot plan. Yes, I've been paying $30/month for the hotspot, since the day I switched to Sprint.
I Dropped the 4G Hotspot (Score:2)
I pay over $100:mo for a 4G HTC on Sprint with the hotspot, unlimited data. I was paying $30:mo for the hotspot. It's a work phone; our field service division uses them in conjunction with 4G fixed nodes at remote sites they service. We didn't get any real break on the price even though we've got hundreds of accounts and devices on the Sprint network. The 4G signal is nearly nonexistent except when we tune the fixed nodes to point at an antenna, and I'm in NYC. The Hotspot was not at all worth the price, es
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Call me paranoid, but I have this sneaking suspicion that this might have something to do with AT&T trying to buy T-Mobile.
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I suspect it has more to do with Sprint getting the iPhone 5.
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It's a lot more plausible than your suggestion that Sprint is trying to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger for any reason other than self preservation.
Re:Can't control it, so cap it (Score:4, Insightful)
Invest in your damn network infrastructure, you big goddamn babies. Your shareholders can go without their precious dividends for a while.
Sprint hasn't turned a profit in four years. I'm pretty sure they're not paying dividends.
Also (Score:3)
$50 per GB overage. I bet they don't even try to tell you until you get your bill either.
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This is probably a cheaper option then.
http://store.truconnect.com/devices/truconnect-mifi.html [truconnect.com]
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Not sure that's the least expensive option.
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The pricing will be quoted in a dark corner of a far subpage on their web page, done in Flash [heyah.pl] to make sure you can't use a search engine or hyperlinks.
Can you guess how much T-Mobile (Heyah) charges for 7 MB of data roaming? Above $200 -- fortunately, I had "only" that much on a prepaid plan. They do advertise prominently their roaming prices for EU and US, but hide the rates for the rest of Europe as much as they can. Would you expect these could possibly be several orders of magnitude higher? Neither
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These rates are pretty much normal.
International data roaming == robbery.
Re:Dammit (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you even bother to read the summary? This a cap on using your phone as a wifi hot spot. They still have unlimited data plans and this doesn't change that.
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If he's like me, he read the summary. But he wanted to use the unlimited data as a hotspot for his home network when he's there. It'd be a good backup for Comcast even if I didn't ditch their pretty scratchy cablemodem service.
5 gig gets eaten up pretty quickly for that. So, Sprint just removed the reason I was considering getting one of their smartphones. A pity.
In the rural area I live in, it's unlikely that their links would get saturated even with a fair number of users doing that.
I'll just stick with m
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The carriers are just begging for someone (google...) to come in, toss up a bunch of towers across the US, and offer a data only wireless access plan with no caps. And the nation will rejoice.
A phone number tethered to a cell phone is unneeded anymore. Skype/gtalk/ect... clients on the phone can easily take over the voice calling aspects, text messages too.
The ability to separate out the features a cell phone offers and shop around has been possible for awhile now. The carriers know this and are doing all t
Re:Dammit (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the "toss up a bunch of towers" that's extremely expensive and impossible in some locales, like San Francisco, where residents will fight tooth and nail over "radiation".
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More Towers == less radiation hazard (Score:2)
since the radiation hazard (if any) from phones is from the transmitter next to the ear, you want the base station as close as possible because the phone will adjust the transmit power accordingly.
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Why wait for Google or someone else to do that? If you think that is such a great idea, put together a business plan that involves spending a ton of money to build towers, remaining price competitive with the existing carriers (so you can attract more than just the very few top bandwidth users), and overbuilding your network so that no user ever runs into a cap or throttling situation. Pitch that plan to investors, and have a go at it.
Re:Dammit (Score:5, Interesting)
And google would learn the same lesson. Wireless Internet is fraud. Everybody hypes it, everybody advertises people watching video and doing all sorts of high bitrate stuff. But once a net goes out of beta test there isn't enough actual bandwidth available on the chunks of spectrum devoted to 3/4G to feed the screaming hordes who sign up. And until they go seriously into microcell and put nodes on every light pole there never will be... and probably not even then because our voracious desire for ever faster will have outstripped even that. So everyone slaps bandwidth caps on to stop the YouTube viewers, the video calls and all that foolishness and the network limps and groans along under the impossible load that still remains.
It is math people. There just ain't enough airspace to stuff that many bit into. Wires and fibers aren't dead yet.
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Re:Dammit (Score:5, Insightful)
> Yes, there is a limit to wireless bandwith, but that isn't why it is so expensive.
Yup, that is reason #1, #2 and #3. Because without caps people would use their wireless like they use their wired Internet. Hell, most people would just ditch their wired Internet in favor of tethering. After all, in most tech savvy households every member old enough to use they Internet is already packing a smartphone. It would just make sense. Except there isn't nearly enough bandwidth for that. Pricing is nature's way of forcing people to share a finite resource. Of course if people really were willing to fork over enough money, more spectrum, towers, whatever would become available to service that demand.
> It is expensive for the same reason many wired ISPs have 5GB caps: because they can
No, again it is sorta supply and demand. So long as it was just a few netheads slurping up extreme amounts of bandwidth the ISPs were willing to ignore it because they all felt the word "UNLIMITED" in the ad copy was more important. Heck, few customers would even be able to know how much Internet they were using so fear of hitting a cap and getting billed zillions of dollars in overages would have impeded uptake of the Internet. Nobody would have watched many YouTube videos. Nobody would have let anyone else touch their PC (remember Compuserve? Who would have let the neighbor's kid plop down in front of their CI$ account? Almost nobody.), the kids would have been strictly monitored, etc. And no explosive growth. People wouldn't have become addicted. But then Netflix and Hulu threatened to saturate the net with video. In direct competition to the bundles the ISPs (now down to the cable and phone companies in most markets) were offering. The combined threat to both their network infrastructure and cash flow became greater than their fear of customer reaction to caps.
And please remember, yes the cable company sells you 10+mbps service but on the understanding your use will be bursty, not constant. They oversubscribe their outbound link 10:1 or more. And don't bitch about that being unfair. They also sell real service intended for heavy use with an SLA promising you will get every last bit per second you are paying for, try pricing it sometime.
Re:Dammit (Score:4, Interesting)
I want to know why Sprint won't sell me unlimited 3G. I had Sprint. It was unlimited for a couple years. Then a 5GB cap came in.
So I switched to Virgin Mobile, which is a Sprint brand. Used Sprint's network. Was unlimited. But the modem sucked (it overheated) and eventually they ditched the unlimited plan.
So I switched to Millenicom. It's unlimited. I'm using my original Sprint modem. Millenicom is a Sprint reseller. It's ten dollars more than Sprint was. Been on this for a while, no problems.
If a Sprint reseller can sell me an unlimited data plan, why can't Sprint?
Sprint's still getting money off my service, but presumably they're getting less than when I was paying them directly.
I usually use about ten gigs a month, sometimes up to 30 or so if there's a good sale on downloadable games somewhere.
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Why is it then that we don't hear about crap like this from places like Japan, where internet speeds and population density are both much higher?
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Why is it then that we don't hear about crap like this from places like Japan, where internet speeds and population density are both much higher?
'Cause we can't read Japanese?
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You're right, mobile will never have as much bandwidth as fiber/copper, that's why I didn't try to claim it would.
My hope is someone big with a stake in getting everyone networked and using it (yup, google) jumps into the market and shakes things up to the point the big carriers shift towards mobile data as a utility. You have mobile to your handset, high speed to your home, voice and text via a VOIP provider, and you get a handset like any other piece of consumer electronics instead of bundled with an insa
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Yeah, this move takes a lot of nerve. Especially after Sprint's campaign where they bragged about the fact that Sprint has absolutely no caps or throttling on their 4G service. I'm not surprised. Just disappointed.
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I have an Android with all the bells and whistles and use tethering all the time.
Can I break my Sprint contract because of this?
You probably could. But who are you going to move to then? Verizon? They cap normal data as well, where sprint still has unlimited. Att? They have lower caps than Verizon.
You could root your phone and wireless tether for free.
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I'm pretty sure that anytime there is a contract change made you have the option of ending it without penalty.
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Normally yes, once they change the terms you have 30 days to read them over and think about it. If you don't cancel before then it's assumed you agreed. In the past I've received a notice in the mail about any changes in the terms.
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The hotspot feature works fine if you root your phone. Don't use Sprint's hotspot app - it looks specifically for a hotspot plan. Download WiFi Tether [google.com] instead. There are some issues turni
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Jul gunax lbh. Gur fzht frys-fngvfsnpgvba vf uvtuyl nccrnyvat.
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Why on earth don't they invest the same time and money they did coming up with the goddamn things in the first place to develop a better technology to make the damn things scale better?
Because you keep giving them your money with the technology they already have. What incentive are you giving them to improve?
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No, Sprint's network and services already look bad. But Sprint is cheap - compared to AT&T. T-Mobile is cheaper. AT&T is buying T-Mobile to eliminate the cheap competition. Which might be good for Sprint, driving cheapo subscribers into Sprint's cheap(er) contracts. But that's supply/demand competition without a cartel. In a cartel, they compete not based on price or quality, but on lockins and infrastructure screwovers. With a cheapo T-Mobile as an ally downmarket, Sprint will be easier for AT&