Travel Technology - T-Mobile's Free Tethering Ending with 'Ice Cream Sandwich'

From PC Magazine (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404429,00.asp)

HTC's upgrade of the HTC Sensation on Wednesday to Android 4.0 will be bittersweet, as a T-Mobile representative said that the company will begin enforcing its $14.99 per month wireless hotspot plan.

That probably means that the carrier's policy of letting some customers use the feature for free will end, making a Wi-Fi hotspot subscription mandatory for those who want the "Ice Cream Sandwich"/Android 4.0 upgrade, and wish to keep using the phone as a wireless hotspot.

Looks like they got the bugs worked out so they can actually start billing people for it.

Fifteen bucks a month is a good deal if you need it, but of course not a good deal if you were getting it for free.

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.2; Galaxy Nexus Build/ICL53F) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.133 Mobile Safari/535.19)

Does this just apply to that particular phone? I have T-Mobile prepaid on my unlocked google nexus and tether quite a bit...

Ditto. I'm on the $3 a day and tether with FoxFi. We don't use it much, but we have friends in from Germany this week and she is using my Android with TMobile for exactly that purpose.

This ends my thoughts of using T-Mobile. I am so sick of hearing businesses thinking they are doing better by offering less and charging more. The American consumer must demand better than accepting worse. I can never understand that why they charge double for capped data.

Simply root the phone.

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.2; Galaxy Nexus Build/ICL53F) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.133 Mobile Safari/535.19)

Does this just apply to that particular phone? I have T-Mobile prepaid on my unlocked google nexus and tether quite a bit...

They were quite unclear in the story about that, only saying maybe, but certainly for the people with this phone going forward. I would bet that they don't have any way to know on the others (or did not have any way to know). Betting these phones rat you out.

"T-Mobile began offering a Smartphone Mobile Hotspot plan in November 2010. However, due to technical limitations with software, customers were not being charged for the feature on select T-Mobile products," a T-Mobile representative said. "Customers who choose to upgrade their HTC Sensation 4G to the optional Android 4.0 (ICS) software update will be required to sign up for the $14.99 Smartphone Mobile Hotspot plan."

Furthermore, some users were also given a grace period of sorts. "T-Mobile may not immediately block you from Wi-Fi sharing until it is verified that you are using your device as a modem...and at that time you may be blocked and then required to purchase a feature to continue using it," a T-Mobile customer support representative wrote last year. "That said, there may be a period of time where you are able to tether without having the feature added on the account."

I think that they have it setup on their side when the server validates the session to check to see if the account allows for tethering. I had tethered my blackberry, which included unlimited data, for years for free. Didn't need it for a few months and went to use it yesterday and the session would not allow for a connection to anything other than a t-mobile splash screen telling me to add the service for $15 per month.

I now have a tablet for $25 per month to replace that device. Sucks to be T-Mo.

Thank god it's just about T-Mobile in the U.S. For a second I was afraid this was more global announcement ;)

I have a T-mobile US HTC One S (running stock ICS). A couple of days ago I tried to tether my Thinkpad Tablet for the first time and got the dreaded splash screen where it informs you that you need to add the tethering plan for $14.99. A quick APN tweak "solved" it. For now...

i hope the wizards at xda-developers find a work around for this...