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Sprint Customers Face 5GB Hotspot Data Cap, As of Oct. 2
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."
How does this affect USB tethering, if at all?
Call me paranoid, but I have this sneaking suspicion that this might have something to do with AT&T trying to buy T-Mobile.
Call me paranoid, but I have this sneaking suspicion that this might have something to do with AT&T trying to buy T-Mobile."
Indeed. If they'd already successfully bought T-Mobile, the cap wouldn't be anywhere near so "generous".
$50 per GB overage. I bet they don't even try to tell you until you get your bill either.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
It'll make out network and services look bad by comparison!
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.
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.
"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.
jailbreak the phone that is ok under the law and use a 3rd party hotspot app.
Absolutely. If ATT buys T-Mobile then ATT will increase the prices, which is why Sprint is trying to block it. So, it makes sense that Sprint would just raise their prices and/or change their policies because they can. If you believe this then I have some beach front property on the moon to sell you.
Sprint limited their data cap because 1) they can, 2) they know their customers like them better than the rival so they damage will be minimal, and 3) because right now they can blame ATT as their simple scapegoat of the day.
If ATT did nothing at all today it would still have no impact on Sprint.
Stop being gullible and realize their just screwing their users.
What's funny, in light of all this, the new company motto is "F!@# the customer, we will change the policy and accept X% of customers jumping ship". You should be blaming Netflix, not ATT for this whole mess. After all, that's the new business model of accepting % client base losses over what you care about.
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.]
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.
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.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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?
I have a Samsung Epic 4G and haven't been able to get the HotSpot to work (tethered or not). Ever. Google, forums, and IRC have all pointed to signs of a "disabled" (read: Will always generate an error) feature. If all the cellphone companies are pimps, at least Sprint beats on me less and only takes HALF my money.
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
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.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I wonder if that's the real reason.
It sure would be nice if they would allow some more competition. Too bad the little guys can't afford e911, cost of compliance with FCC regulations, etc. If they didn't have to pay that, we might have a situation more like the rest of the developed world.
For reference
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."
We don't live in Shouldland.
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 they can to make sure you stay bundled together with them for voice/text/web/the handset.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
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 my trackfone. With as little as I do voice calls, a more featured phone/plan is little use to me. A high bandwidth limit/unlimited data connection plus a smartphone would have been useful.
I used a Virgin Mobile usb stick (Virgin is just a Sprint brand at this point), back in January it got saturated lots of evenings, in a somewhat rural area (but close enough to a medium size city).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I suspect it has more to do with Sprint getting the iPhone 5.
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".
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.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
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.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
I'm pretty sure that anytime there is a contract change made you have the option of ending it without penalty.
This is because of the fact that Sprint will soon get the iPhone, to be released in a few weeks.
If google or any one else did this they would get sued by everyone. Hell the big carriers sue anyone who tries to setup their own stuff in small rural areas. Granted how effective it wouldn't nearly as effective against someone as large as google as opposed small moneyless farmers or organizations.
Back in the day (yep, I am old!) before there were cell phones in every empty hand happily clicking away at the mobile web, facebook, youtube, etc., there were no cell phones. I believe it was AT&T, or someone who worked for them who designed the first cell phone. 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? It is just plain stupid to keep plugging in more antennas hoping you can keep adding millions of users to an infrastructure that was developed 30-40 years ago. It don't work for high speed internet access, and it won't work for them. AT&T! HEY! You are _going_ to have to spend some fucking money, get over it bitches!
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
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.
this is my sig
Thank you. I was a Sprint "Premier" customer until they got rid of that and I'm paying out the nose for this thing, the bill is around $118/month without insurance on the phone. I want to shop around a bit. It's just ridiculous how they railroad consumers.
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.
You can blame this on Sprint's roll-out of the iPhone 5, coming next month.
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?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That's why you start where people aren't crazy. Then you let your product speak for itself, and soon the small group of outspoken opponents will have to deal with a very annoyed majority.
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.
Democrat delenda est
To be fair, I didn't see anything in that ad about unlimited tethering, and the rest is still unlimited.
Dilbert RSS feed
no locking out 3th party stuff and makeing you pay for the 1th party app is antitrust
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?
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.
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?
I guess this directly conflicts with the commercial, that stresses that when they say Unlimited, they mean it! They do highlight that the other companys cap bandwidth, but Sprint goes on and on without slowing down or anything. At least the other companies aren't saying one thing and doing the opposite.
Jul gunax lbh. Gur fzht frys-fngvfsnpgvba vf uvtuyl nccrnyvat.
Or the mobile companies realize they have a near-monopoly on the market, the average consumer will never notice how much they are being gouged, and there is too large a price-of-entry for any real competition to exist, so they gouge their "customers" out the ass. Yes, there is a limit to wireless bandwith, but that isn't why it is so expensive. It is expensive for the same reason many wired ISPs have 5GB caps: because they can. And because the profit is so good they have no interest in actually expanding their network to properly service their customers.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
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?
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Clear offers unlimited mobile 4G Internet for not much more per month, AND they use the same 4G network as Sprint! (Sprint is a major investor in Clearwire.)
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).
Is this retroactive to all existing customers? That wasn't clear. If so, that sux like illegal bait and switch scams sux.
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 through this NVRAM buffer out to the Internet. Functionally equivalent to tethering, but not tethering as defined by the phone company who says that you can download unlimited data to your phone itself? Yes it shows how ridiculous these artificial restrictions are, but I'll bet (IANAL) that it would hold up in court because it only downloads data to the phone. What you do with that data afterwards is completely up to you.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm not in favor of new regulations, but I'd support this one. Quite simple: BIG TEXT overrules small text. If you say UNLIMITED DATA with or without an asterisk, even if the small text says 2GB or 5GB or any GB cap, it doesn't apply. Simple as that.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
> 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.
Democrat delenda est
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.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I get FREE cellular UMTS 256/256 internet in Poland. No caps, only downside is forced reconnect every 60 minutes.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
The headline could be read to say that Sprint is monitoring how much data their customers download to their phones when using other hot spots, while the reality is that they are controlling how much data you can send through one of their mobile hotspots.
While the latter makes more sense, you can't rule out the possibility of the former when talking about a company like Sprint.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Well, let me see if I have the math right. I think you would divide $29.99 by (infinity/5), which would make it effectively 0. So the new price is $0 for 5 GB of hotspot usage. I think that is reasonable.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Save that the technology to find you out is getting better by the day. Part of the blame goes to the data hogs who insisted on abusing this feature when it wasn't blocked. You know who you are.
Can you break your contract? Sure.... you'll pay the penalty for doing so of course. You're still going to need phone/data service from someone, and by now, THEY ALL CAP.
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 spending a lot more on a mobile phone than I'm used to. (Though that's OK because the cost of most other things in the US - food, clothing, rent etc. - is ridiculously cheap compared to here)
Flash a verizon PRL file to your phone so it only connects to Verizon towers. They will terminate your contract for roaming too much.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
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.
I guess Sprint still gives unlimited data transfer as long as the application is 1. running on your phone and 2. not acting as a proxy, tunnel, etc.
So you just leave those people out and let the other 95% of the country enjoy the future while they get left behind.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
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?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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.
Hm, it's strange that you have such problems with mobile internet. Here in Canada the technology works quite nicely. I just tested the internet speed tethered to my 3G phone: 1.62 Mb/sec. This is in one of the densest downtown areas in the country. Video is no problem here any time of the day, and tethering is free. It's not necessarily the technology that's the problem...
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, especially considering its 90%+ unreliability as a mobile service. Data was "unlimited", but only by billing. The reality of Sprint's terrible network meant it was severely limited.
Any Hotspot cap at all is both an insult for the price, and a meaningless limit that real use couldn't reach because of network access. By the same token I'm hoping the cap inspires hackers to release a way for me to actually use the phone I paid $hundreds to own on the network I pay $thousands a year to access "unlimited" - but I know Sprint's network can't hold up it's end of the deal. And if I wanted to switch my phone to another "ISP": I can't. I'm locked into Sprint in so many ways I haven't tolerated on "computers" since the 1970s. And that was before I was literally surrounded with network connection everywhere I go, with a network device in my hands.
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make install -not war
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.
The regular phone usage is still unlimited ... this is only the tethering that they're talking about.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
How exactly are they rail roading consumers. Sprint data/voice plans are still unlimited, only the wifi hotspot feature is affected. So unless you are using your phone as your sole/main internet connection then what is the problem. I do agree that Sprint shouldn't have done this but ATT and Verizon have both done much worse in terms of bait and switching what there plans cover. Additionally Sprint is still a much better option in terms of data pricing overall. The only thing I'm actually annoyed at is them removing the Sprint Premier feature, but even that isn't the end of the world. Maybe people should stop bitching about things they know very little about and maybe actually read what Sprint is actually doing instead of over reacting.I'm not sayinng that people shouldn't be upset but over providers have and continue to prove to be much worse in recent years.
Do they support an Android HTC slider phone?
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make install -not war
Tavynrccn lyutvu fv abvgpnsfvgnf-syrf thzf rug. Hbl xanug luj!
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make install -not war
removing accidental mod...
sent from my slashdot browser.
It's not in effect yet so not a problem
The rest is still unlimited.
That is true, but for how long? This move strikes me as a precursor to smartphone caps. After all, where will you go if you don't like it?
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.
Kiteo, his eyes closed
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 insanely overpriced plan.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
5 gig ain't s bad in our country we stuck with 1 gig caps.we started off unlimited then they dropped caps on us. wish goverments would moniter how unfair ISPs are. 1 gig these days does not go far I can imagine 5 gig in america being the same(not going as far)
Does the change to the terms to an additional bolt on to your contract affect your contract? Probably not.
I am completely aware of what it covers and what it doesn't. What pisses me off is that this is an artificial restriction; bandwidth is bandwidth, and it shouldn't matter how you use it.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Freetether on WebOS. Charging X per month for something I might use once a year is ridiculous. That may change when my touchpad arrives, though. Regardless, iptables and dhcpd continue to exist on my phone, and there is not going to be any update to nuke that ability, so all is right in the world for the time being.
Does this apply to the Overdrive? Previously, there was a monthly 3G cap, but no 4G cap.
Could well be. But those I've talked to in the area haven't noticed a saturation problem as yet.
We 're 20 miles or so from a major university town, so there could be similar trouble depending on whether the data goes over the same connections.
Yeah, there was a large university in my nearby town. The congestion was frequently horrible (and it at least seemed to be on the network, not between the stick and the tower).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I have the family everything data plan. There is no 3g cap, except for tethering and for their usb dongles, which is ridiculously low. Your plan may differ, but I have never had a cap on 3g or 2g or any other g. I have called to confirm this every year or so, and even did so barely a month ago. There is no cap. And the new caps only apply to the hotspot feature, which is so overpriced no reasonable person would get it anyway. It's meant to milk cash off wealthy travelers, near as I can tell.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
"...SLA promising you will get every last bit per second you are paying for, try pricing it sometime."
Don't tell them that, the poor fellows' heads will explode.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.