For one, with most plans and tethering-capable phones, you can tether multiple devices via WIFI hotspot, USB, or bluetooth connections. More devices sharing a connection are likely to use more bandwidth than your phone alone could consume.

For another, due to the human interface and capabilities of a particular tethered device, such as a laptop, it may have the ability to consume more bandwidth (do more things at once) than your phone does.

the cost of sms ,and this is from 2008 .
sms about 4X the cost of Hubble Space Telescope data transmission
http://phys.org/news129793047.html

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...elescope/03291
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05...ts_r_v_pricey/

Those are good arguments but I wasn't charged for additional PC connections, I was charged for "tethering". Multiple people can use the same phone without an additional charge. And I could easily counter that since my PC has a larger disk cache than my phone, my bandwidth consumption actually went down.

In any case, since nobody is enforcing anti-trust law and the carriers all collude to fix prices, I don't have much of a choice. Therefore, the debate is moot.

I use mine as a 3g usb modem and no driver are needed.

Hi H5X00R i just want to clear you one thing that in the todays market people want more features at any price. actually you are not paying for mobile you are paying for the technology that you are going to use.

I the same way if Sony launch a mobile with a new feature then also they will charge you more. because they already paid so many billion dollars for the research to create a perfect mobile for their use with latest feature.

It depends on what you buy. Smartphones can range from $50 to as high as $1000 or more. My budget for a smartphone is $200 or less. I would never go beyond that for a smartphone.

Also, android is so fragmented from the different carriers it is almost hard to know when you're going to get the next android release. So be warned, that expensive android phone you buy, you'll likely to be stuck with that release for a uncertain amount of time. The only exception to this are phones from Google. They always get the latest android releases as soon it is available.

Iphone users are also lucky, they get the latest IOS release as soon as it is available.

I was reading the thread and then came across...
..which looks silly to me.

Maybe it's because I'm living in Switzerland - we usually have a fixed monthly data volume and then anything beyond it is payed extra => in this context your statement makes absolutely no sense. The exception would be for providers that provide (fake) unlimited bandwidth => this might be your case => is this your case? If not can you then please explain?

Cheers

Blackberry 9530 Storm phone here.

Wife wanted a umbilical cord on me so she bought the phone
on ebay for $26.00 in the box with all attachments like new. I unlocked it and use H20 pay as you go Sim card for 10 bucks a month for 200 minutes. Uses AT&T Towers. I put Opera Mini in it.
The phone came with a 8gig micro SD card that I loaded with music so it is a glorified mp3 player.

Has all the Bells and Whistles. Hooks up as mass storage via usb in any of my Linux installs.
Drag and Drop. IF Blackberry goes out of business like it is looking so far. Cheap smart-phones may flood the market from them. Actually a pretty well built tough phone with easy parts availability (Batteries)

It is not the latest and greatest. But I don't pay for the phone or air time. My ol lady does.
I use it mainly as a mp3 player and video camera. I am not a phone person. Just a biker with a smart-phone.

I have a Kyocera Hydro I paid $99 for this year, with the first month's service. It has 512 ram and a 1ghz processor. It will do any 2 or 3 things at once fairly well. I can download torrents, watch video, tweet, etc- I use it mostly at home for youtube, fb, e-mail, etc. For $99, I can't complain. It's much better than the Cliq or Mytouch or G2 that I paid $400+ for each when new.

Thats balloney. Tethering is just a hardware feature that redirects internet traffic to another device.
Most carriers have a speed limits on 3g connections and often a maximum monthly download amount.

It would be like turning off the webcam on a laptop, blocking it and charging to activate it. For those who do not use webcams, that doesnt matter, but for those who do, it would suck.

Yes, since I wrote that post of mine that you quoted, I've learned a bit more about tethering. There is a distinction between a tethering service offered by a cellphone service provider and the tethering capability of a cellphone. I agree with you that the latter is a hardware feature that is distinct from any service that a provider may or may not offer to its subscribers.

With the exception of Verizon, who was forbidden by the FCC from charging for tethering in the C block of the upper 700MHz spectrum, I'm of the opinion that a cellphone service provider can legally prohibit tethering on its network, and/or forbid the use of third-party tethering apps in its TOS, and offer its own priced apps and services for tethering. Businesses offer services to make money, so why shouldn't they?

The best argument against my current view is the question raised by an attorney who wrote this piece on the Dallas Bar Association web site: http://www.dallasbar.org/content/cel...are-they-legal

But that question hasn't even been raised in court, so far as I know.

In all likelihood, extra charges and special data plans for tethering will probably disappear from the scene eventually. But that doesn't mean it will be free. The infrastructure costs to provide for increased network bandwidth consumption will be recovered. It'll just be factored into the base cost of data plans, and all smartphone users will pay for it, whether they tether or not.

Its funny because I gave up my home phone a year ago because it was the first thing to quit working in a storm. There were many times I called to report it from my cellphone or my laptop over the internet. After AT&T bought out our local telco the reliability went down to around 50%.



I've always paid more $ to have a smaller device. The Dell salesman tried to talk me out of my C400 laptop when I bought it because the screen was small and it didn't have any media drives. My data is important to me and goes wherever I do and a smaller device means its easier to carry. I switched to a smartphone hoping to be able to get away from carrying a laptop as it made more sense to carry one $700 device than a $1000 laptop and $200 phone. But sadly I have yet to replace a laptop because smartphones have morphed into app phones and now they are all about entertainment and posting useless information on social sites. I could post a dozen sites what song I'm listening to at the moment but can't edit exceptions to a recurring appointment.
My phone has a faster cpu and more memory than my laptop yet it does far less.

@enine
Sorry, didn't understand your point.
You can carry around a micro-sd card to keep your data with you - why did you switch your laptop with a smartphone if the smartphone anyway doesn't have the medium you can use to edit your data (being keyboard, mouse, whatever)?

Well, older smartphones could, I was editing data on a Windows CE phone in 1999.
A lot of newer smartphones are dropping the sd slot. Go look at all the newer Motorola since Google bought them out.

I think it's cheap.In China,it costs you only 200 yuan,equal to 40 dollars.