This is why we need net neutrality

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.

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.

What is the difference between cellular data being used on my phone and cellular data being used on my notebook?

The difference is the cellular company's profits amount.

I've had great success getting around these restrictions.

CalyxOS + Always on VPN (mullvad)

The secret sauce is using a Android version that allows you to share your VPN with hotspotting. I believe only calyxos and lineage allow you to do this. Since the VPN client is running on the phone, all the traffic that originates from the phone will look like phone data, with the appropriate time to live, OS fingerprinting, etc.

This can't be done on stock Android, because it does not allow the VPN to be shared over tethering. So tethering traffic will not getting capsulated on the VPN client. There's a security argument for this, but I prefer the user flexibility of allowing all the traffic to get VPNed.

It's still possible to do this without VPN sharing on the phone, you can use normal tethering on a unlocked phone, like stock Android. You just have to modify the traffic signature to look like whatever the carrier is looking for. Setting the appropriate time to live, using a VPN, and doing other OS fingerprinting tricks to keep the traffic consistent. It's much easier to use a ROM that lets you share the VPN

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.

Which is bullshit. Who cares if you download something at full speed on your phone or through the hotpot? A bit is a bit, doesn't matter where it ends up when received by the phone's modem.

If it's an android phone, enable dev mode, install adb on your laptop, run an sshd under termux on the phone, and you should be able to set up iptables to forward packets from the laptop through the phone. The phone won't know that it's being used for tethering. Although I hadn't seen the stuff about packet TTL before. Maybe it's as simple as just adjusting that.

Att et al keeps throwing around the word 'unlimited'. I actually had a conversation with Verizon, before I dropped them, and actually used this exact quote to the guy...

He was like, "princess bride. Nice. But, yeah, I have to read the script."

Well that's because, ~~fuck you pay me~~ those are special data packets.

Data is data in the same way water is water and electricity is electricity; nobody should have the power to dictate how you use it. I really wish we’d enshrine genuine net neutrality and shut this kind of nonsense down.

you also have unlimited data, unless you hit a data cap, and then you hit a data rate limit, so technically your data is actually limited.

Can we legislate these fucks to just actual provide the bandwidth they claim to? I.E. a max cap of the max bandwidth * the max amount of time it can be available for in a billing period. Anything else is fraud IMO.

It's a really weird and very American problem. Our home broadband either doesn't exist or is really expensive in any given market, and tends to have clauses, conditions, etc. Like Comcrap limiting people to 1TB/mon (very easy to burn through quickly by just watching some television programs) unless they pay more for "unlimited". People, as taught by Capitalism, hunt for the best deals. Paying one bill instead of two saves money. Some have light enough home Internet requirements that they don't need expensive home broadband.

Then the companies get pissed that we're doing what we are supposed to do, find the best deal for our needs, so they set up false gates to make sure we follow the path they want us to follow. Then they pay off the regulatory agencies to allow terms like "unlimited" mean not unlimited, 3G HSPA+ being known as 4G. 4G being known as LTE, 4GLTE or 5Ge. 5G being known as 5G, 5G+, 5GUW, 5GUC, (even though, with the exception of T-Mobile in many markets, that 5G will actually be non-standalone and anchored to an LTE packet core, not 5G SA) and all the other damn arbitrary marketing buzzwords. All of which really mean nothing because the 5G spec allows a carrier to flip on the 5G availability flag on a phone even if 5G doesn't exist in your market.

Most of this, AT&T is the biggest perpetrator of by far. Especially the lying about 5G.

The rules are all made up, nothing is real. Time for the arbitrary monthly bill increase for no reason! Pay up, chump!

Unlimited with a limit

You see, this is why we need net neutrality

EDIT: see, im glad someone else said it already

How can they tell if you are tethering?

How do they even know if you use your data as a hotspot? That's just ridiculous!

Use a VPN. ISP are being disingenuous when they claim a data connection is unlimited at the point of purchase and then slug us with restrictions when we try and use it. If they can detect a tether, the VPN should obscure it.

128kbps is only mildly better then dial up lmao

It's because at&t also sells home Internet. If you have unlimited hotspot, then you wouldn't want that sweet sweet DSL or whatever shit Internet ATT sells

I'd have a lot of fun trying to get around it. For example, if the phone and the computer were on the same non-Internet-connected wifi network, and you set up an SSH server to send outbound requests through the 4G modem, would they be able to find out you're using the hotspot?

I used to root my phone and then could use the hotspot without my provider knowing.

max 128kbps

TMobile doesn't have a hard throttle, but they'll cut priority under congestion so that if wherever you are has someone else vying for the bandwidth, they get first shot.

Frankly, given that the limited resource is the cell bandwidth, that seems like a more reasonable way to go. It doesn't hurt them much if someone wants available bandwidth and there's no contention for it from others.

They can detect you using your phone as hotspot? Creepy.

If you use a VPN it can also mask it too. That's how I used to get around it before moving to Google Fi.

Some or all major mobile providers outright BAN hotspots in their ToS. However, they don't enforce the rule as it would be very unpopular.

And we still have pretty much the most expensive cellular data in the EU. The triopoly sucks.

Your data is unlimited, the SPEED of the data is not. ;)

Plug it in via USB cable, shouldn't register as a hotspot then. At least that's how it works on linux, IDK about other OS.