What is the difference between cellular data being used on my phone and cellular data being used on my notebook? Data is data.
This is why we need net neutrality
And more competition.
Net neutrality isn’t going to do a thing about this kind of stuff. In a best case scenario, you’ll end up with overall data usage limitations - no more ‘unlimited mobile data’.
ISPs meter data usage because it’s pretty much the only way they can impose some form of limitation on a finite capacity to provide such data to you and other customers - other than data rate limits (read: slower speeds). They can’t guarantee data rates in almost any setup, because ultimately, while ‘data usage’ is a bit of an artificial construct and ‘data’ is not in any way finite, the pipes that deliver the data certainly are of finite capacity. Mobile data capacity - and in fact, any wireless medium - is a shared medium, the more people try to use it simultaneously, the less pleasant it’s going to be for each individual user. Ask Starlink users in many US areas how overselling limited capacity impacts the individual user.
Mobile data usage also has different usage patterns than if you’re hotspotting your PC. You’re not going to download massive games or other bandwidth hogs to your mobile. You probably won’t be running a torrent client either. So they can give you unlimited mobile data because you’re simply not going to put as much of a strain on the infrastructure with pure on-device usage than you will with hotspotting.
This isn’t a defense of what AT&T is doing. But net neutrality isn’t going to force them to suddenly be all ethical. It’s not going to make them provision infrastructure that doesn’t fall over at the first signs of higher-than-usual load. And it certainly can’t change the physical realities of wireless data communication. In an ideal world ISPs wouldn’t be so greedy and/or beholden to greedy shareholders to be cutting corners, and instead provide sufficient infrastructure that can handle high demand.
And to those who are talking about their workarounds: you may not like it but you’ve signed a contract. That contract stipulates acceptable use, and if you’re found to be breaching the contract terms, the other party is within their rights to terminate the contract. Again, in an ideal world these contract terms would be more balanced towards the needs of the customer, but in the meantime your best recourse against unfavourable contract terms is to take your business elsewhere. And if you can’t do that, everything else is at your own risk.
This is one of those ‘innovations’ people mean when they say capitalism drives innovation. Not the hotspot, the pointless extra charge for something your phone can just do on its own.
yeah they are selling “wireless home internet” hard now, can’t have people using their phone hotspot for that.
How do they even know if you use your data as a hotspot? That’s just ridiculous!
My ISP’s a dick, but to my knowledge, unlimited has to mean unlimited around here. There where months where we had Problems with our fibre, so I did everything over a hotspot from my phone. Used 100’s of GB’s no one ever complained.
Get proper consumer protection laws, people.
*Cries in American.*
Get proper consumer protection laws, people.
And if you’re homeless, just buy a house 🫶
It really is the same energy
How do they know if the source of data is hotspot? I’d imagine there is a way to stop your phone grassing on you.
TTL in the packet header is 29 instead of 30
Try plugging your phone on via the USB instead of a WiFi hotspot. It may not detect it as a hotspot.
Doesn’t matter, it still gets flagged as hotspot traffic.
I wonder if a VPN would make any difference? I have tasker set up to kick on wireguard any time I leave my wifi network. They’d only see my WG port.
It hasn’t made a difference for me, I’m on Verizon if that matters. I’ve got Wireguard set to always on and all traffic but I still get the usage notifications. IIRC there’s a separate apn for any traffic that goes through the hotspot or tethering connection and that’s how it’s monitored. The traffic will be encrypted, but they can still see it.
Well that sucks. I wonder if there a way around it if you’re rooted
