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Verizon Offers Free Tethering Because It Has To
jfruh writes "Most U.S. wireless carriers are trying to have it both ways on tethering or smartphones-as-hotspots — moving people from unlimited data plans to plans where they pay by the gigabyte, but then also charging them extra if they want to share the gigabytes they've paid for with other devices. But on Android phones on Verizon, at least, you can still tether, not because Verizon is trying to be more consumer friendly, but because, according to an FCC ruling, they agreed to allow it when they bought formerly public spectrum."
It's not just because it used to be part of public spectrum. It's because when Verizon bought it, they bought it under the terms that they would not restrict the type of data being sent/received on that spectrum in any way, regardless of the previous status of that spectrum being public or not. So, Verizon bought the spectrum knowing damn well that they were not allowed to restrict tethering on that spectrum according to the contract of that sale. If they didn't want to follow that, then they should have bought different spectrum that didn't have those terms.