Galaxy Nexus - Wifi Tethering without the need for root

[Liderc]

I dont get why people are still arguing over ethics and semantics of verizons business model. They dont care about what they should do to benefit their customers. Its more important how much money can and will be exploited from current and new customers based on marketability. And google has said in the past that they are giving carriers this privilege to lock or unlock the tethering feature. Im certain tethering is locked when you get the GNEX and you will need a tethering plan to use it. It doesnt make sense for verizon to release the Gnex without locking the tethering feature because that would mean a huge selling point for it compared to other phones. Also being "pure google" doesnt mean you get tethering unlocked.

THE TOPIC TITLE IS MISLEADING. i dont see anywhere in the link posted that is says root is not required. The OP just trolled you all.

You'll be able to download an app just like the OG can to tether.

 

[ryguy5254]

The original post is useless. The Droid X has had wifi tethering hot spot since it received Froyo 2.2. Yesterday, I turned on my Wifi Hotspot and connected my laptop, when you open up your browser, you get the "subscription service" thing where you have to pay $20 more for wifi tethering data transfer.

Another note to add is that the article is from the UK.

 

[stratjb]

But you're not getting the point. If you currently use say 30GB on your phone in one month, your data will be throttled. That is not unlimited.

Firstly, Their policy doesn't say that they will throttle, just that they can. You just read cloverton saying they don't throttle him.
Secondly, you do know that throttling is slowing the data down not stopping it altogether right? You can still use your 30GB it'll just might be at a slower speed.

 

[Liderc]

Firstly, Their policy doesn't say that they will throttle, just that they can. You just read cloverton saying they don't throttle him.
Secondly, you do know that throttling is slowing the data down not stopping it altogether right? You can still use your 30GB it'll just might be at a slower speed.

Now you're reaching, slowing data to a crawl is essentially making it useless.

Their official policy: If you’re in the top 5% of data users, your speed is reduced only when you are connected to a congested cell site. Once you are no longer connected to a congested site, your speed will return to normal.

So yes, it does say they will throttle you. We also know the 2nd part is a lie, as anyone who's posted about being throttled has said they've stayed throttled until their next billing cycle.

 

[suliman]

But you're not getting the point. If you currently use say 30GB on your phone in one month, your data will be throttled. That is not unlimited.

unlimited use not unlimited speed. Arguing semantics. Close this thread.

 

[akhenax]

I dont get why people are still arguing over ethics and semantics of verizons business model. They dont care about what they should do to benefit their customers. Its more important how much money can and will be exploited from current and new customers based on marketability. And google has said in the past that they are giving carriers this privilege to lock or unlock the tethering feature. Im certain tethering is locked when you get the GNEX and you will need a tethering plan to use it. It doesnt make sense for verizon to release the Gnex without locking the tethering feature because that would mean a huge selling point for it compared to other phones. Also being "pure google" doesnt mean you get tethering unlocked.

THE TOPIC TITLE IS MISLEADING. i dont see anywhere in the link posted that is says root is not required. The OP just trolled you all.

Since I am the OP, I will address this post. I am not a Troller. I saw the article as an interesting one and posted to the Galaxy Nexus forums to share that interest. I also started the thread because:

1. I have an OG Droid and I cannot tether to many devices because it only wifi tethers as an adhoc network. This is useless for my applications and I want a phone that will tether the way I want it to.
2. The next phone I get will have tethering options.
3. The article did not mention this was a 3rd party option, or a root option, but an ICS option.

The way it seems, since the Galaxy Nexus is primarily pure Google, then whether or not this was for GSM or CDMA based Galaxy Nexus's the options would be the same based on the fact that it's Ice Cream Sandwich, and Google's flagship device (to be untouched or mostly untouched).

I wanted to educate those who are of this forum of the potential of Wifi tethering with STOCK ICS. If the article is incorrect (you need to be rooted, you must have tethering plan, etc.) then that is not my fault, but of the author who failed to mention these important bits of information, regardless of carrier. Again, I believe this is an ICS option, and not carrier dependent.

 

[vtnerd]

Again, you pay for unlimited data for your phone. Period. You do not pay Verizon for unlimited data for your phone, laptop, desktop, Wii, 3ds, PS3 and your whatever.

You say in one sentence you're not advocating people use it as an ISP then in the next sentence say they should be able to use it for tasks that are exactly what a person uses an ISP at home for.

BTW, I quoted your words, that's not twisting them the last time I checked. Thanks.

1) I'm not discussing what the current policy is. Anyone can settle that matter by reading the ToS. Clearly Verizon thinks I can only use my phone to access data. I'm discussing why the current policy is asinine and what it SHOULD become.
2) Still twisting a bit, I'm afraid.

In their current form, yes I believe Verizon should have to honor what is being sold and serviced but I also said I would be ok with Verizon revising the limits so that all users could use what they are paying for without Verizon worrying about where the data ultimately arrives.

Specifically, I said:

If Verizon can't handle unlimited GB (or 4GB or 2GB or whatever the limit is) then they should not offer those plans as options or continue to service plans with those limits. If they are really overselling their bandwidth that badly then they need to offer realistic amounts of data that they can handle.

In other words, I left the door wide open for Verizon to modify their policies to reflect what they can actually service and not be forced to "just deal with it" if it is truly ruining everyone's experience. It's a small distinction, but not an unimportant one.

A data plan that offered 2GB that I can use however I want (tether, phone, whatever) would be a step in the right direction, even if I lost unlimited data in the short term. Capacity will increase and those limits will continue to increase over time. We've already been through this before with traditional ISPs - remember paying for dial-up by the minute?

But, so long as Verizon continues to service unlimited data plans, they should not make a distinction about where the data ends up. As you can see from this thread, many people use a lot of bandwidth without tethering. I've never used more than 2GB ever (even though I have unlimited) and I did occasionally tether when traveling. Why single out tethering as the evil boogeyman? They might as well say "Netflix streaming is prohibited." It's the same level of nonsense.

To reiterate, the tether policy is nothing but a money-grab. If Verizon can handle 7GB of phone data, it can handle 6GB of phone data and 1GB of tethered data or any other combination of phone and tethered data. If Verizon can't handle it (a laughable claim since it is working fine now and unlimited data plans are no longer available to new customers), then it should kill the unlimited plans.

 

[zathus]

Bla bla bla. When I get it, it's rooted, tweaked and pimped out. And ill say it the way it is. I'm going to use wifi tethering, and have ZERO intentions on paying extra for it. True statement!

Sent from my Droid using DroidForums

 

[nleksan]

This seems like an argument of semantics...

Most people will agree with "Data is data... If a person pays $30 every month for 'Unlimited Data', they should be able to use that data however they wish; as two years ago there was no disclaimer (when they purchased their phone/signed their contract) stating that the data can ONLY be used by that specific phone, tethering should be allowed; it is not an 'ethical' or 'moral' issue..."

Other people will see it differently, and that is FINE! They are entitled to their opinion, and if everyone agreed, what would be the point of this forum? or any forum?

However, the pro-tethering argument ("I should be able to tether to anything I want at no extra charge") is MORE VALID now that VZW has introduced a Tiered Data Plan, so if you are paying for a MAXIMUM OF 2GB EVERY MONTH, Verizon shouldn't give a crap what that data is used for. The only reason that they do is because they can, and do, charge and extra $30/mo for the ability to plug your phone into your laptop, which is INSULTING.


That said....

I have Unlimited Data, and I have used PDA-Net to tether exactly ONE time, and have never bothered since. It was a hassle, and it doesn't matter that much to me.

WHAT DOES MATTER to me is that I am paying $30 for Unlimited Data (on top of 5000 Minutes and Unlimited Texts per month, on a plan with five phones; 3 of which have the data, but all have essentially 1000min/ea and unlimited texts). This is over $450/mo, which is INSANE! And now they want to tell me that I can't choose how I use what I pay for?

THERE WAS NOT A DAMN THING IN THE CONTRACT I SIGNED SAYING ANYTHING ABOUT IT "THROTTLING" MY DATA USAGE!!!

I use my phone's WiFi whenever possible, such as home, school, work, girlfriend's, friends', etc., yet I still end up in the top 5%! This is because I pay for Netflix on top of all of that other stuff, and I use it! I stream maybe ~10-15 movies/mo from Netflix, usually on WiFi but occasionally on road-trips (phone's output connects to my car's aftermarket Pioneer "AVIC" 7" In-Dash DVD/Nav Head-Unit). I also will use it to stream Pandora or other internet-sourced music while driving in the same car, so it comes via 3G. Fortunately, I have a 2TB hard-drive integrated to the head-unit, so I can "capture" songs off Pandora and whatnot.
I also do a lot of online browsing, and while I don't use Adobe Flash, and have control over what scripts run/don't run, it still eats up data at a decent rate.

All said and done, last month (1 road-trip with 5 movies, 9 other movies, 788 songs, 2982 web pages, 28 picture-messages, 3 video-messages, and more), I ended up over 10GB of data usage.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that the following happened:
From November 8th until November 19th, I was averaging 1.523Mbps download speed (average of 27 speed tests, various locations: home, school, work, etc). Beginning mid-day November 20th, I noticed websites were taking longer to load, and my music was choppy... Average of 33 speed tests conducted from mostly-the-same locations, from November 20th to December 7th: 0.471Mbps. WOW.
On November 20th, I logged on to MyVZW, and saw that I had consumed: 5134.2MB of DATA.
As of December 8th, I am now averaging 1.492Mbps, so we'll see how long that lasts...


Throttling exists, and it doesn't matter where you are at.... I live in a Suburb of a big city, in a town with a population of 6k but we have a lot of cell towers... Still, even at 3AM while in my home (which is PERFECTLY located between 3 towers) I was getting data throttled, and never exceeded 500kbps after hitting 5MB of data.

It is BS.

 

[czerdrill]

Not this argument again...

This seems like an argument of semantics...

Most people will agree with "Data is data... If a person pays $30 every month for 'Unlimited Data', they should be able to use that data however they wish; as two years ago there was no disclaimer (when they purchased their phone/signed their contract) stating that the data can ONLY be used by that specific phone, tethering should be allowed; it is not an 'ethical' or 'moral' issue..."

The contract I signed 2 years ago had the disclaimer about tethering, and about throttling. In fact, its been in there since the old days of Blackberry data plans. So unless we signed different contracts, yours has it too.

Other people will see it differently, and that is FINE! They are entitled to their opinion, and if everyone agreed, what would be the point of this forum? or any forum?

Agreed.

However, the pro-tethering argument ("I should be able to tether to anything I want at no extra charge") is MORE VALID now that VZW has introduced a Tiered Data Plan, so if you are paying for a MAXIMUM OF 2GB EVERY MONTH, Verizon shouldn't give a crap what that data is used for. The only reason that they do is because they can, and do, charge and extra $30/mo for the ability to plug your phone into your laptop, which is INSULTING.

Agreed about the tiered plans. I don't get why they have tiers and then charge for tethering also. That's kinda dumb imo. However, I agree with them about charging extra for unlimited plans, because people simply will use more (and ridiculous) amounts of data if they have unlimited tethering. We can argue this till the sun goes down, but that's just a fact. You'll essentially have an ISP everywhere you go no matter where you are, and that's going to lead to more then normal (average) data usage.

That said....

I have Unlimited Data, and I have used PDA-Net to tether exactly ONE time, and have never bothered since. It was a hassle, and it doesn't matter that much to me.

WHAT DOES MATTER to me is that I am paying $30 for Unlimited Data (on top of 5000 Minutes and Unlimited Texts per month, on a plan with five phones; 3 of which have the data, but all have essentially 1000min/ea and unlimited texts). This is over $450/mo, which is INSANE! And now they want to tell me that I can't choose how I use what I pay for?

THERE WAS NOT A DAMN THING IN THE CONTRACT I SIGNED SAYING ANYTHING ABOUT IT "THROTTLING" MY DATA USAGE!!!

Yes there was, yes there is, and yes there will be. The TOS has always stated that you cannot tether illegally (please don't jump on the term 'illegal') and has always stated that they can throttle you to protect their network. This whole "tethering is unfair" crap didn't start with android, it's been around for years, and people have been arguing the same thing for years and saying it wasn't in the contract for years. It always has been, it is currently, it always will be.

I use my phone's WiFi whenever possible, such as home, school, work, girlfriend's, friends', etc., yet I still end up in the top 5%! This is because I pay for Netflix on top of all of that other stuff, and I use it! I stream maybe ~10-15 movies/mo from Netflix, usually on WiFi but occasionally on road-trips (phone's output connects to my car's aftermarket Pioneer "AVIC" 7" In-Dash DVD/Nav Head-Unit). I also will use it to stream Pandora or other internet-sourced music while driving in the same car, so it comes via 3G. Fortunately, I have a 2TB hard-drive integrated to the head-unit, so I can "capture" songs off Pandora and whatnot.
I also do a lot of online browsing, and while I don't use Adobe Flash, and have control over what scripts run/don't run, it still eats up data at a decent rate.

All said and done, last month (1 road-trip with 5 movies, 9 other movies, 788 songs, 2982 web pages, 28 picture-messages, 3 video-messages, and more), I ended up over 10GB of data usage.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that the following happened:
From November 8th until November 19th, I was averaging 1.523Mbps download speed (average of 27 speed tests, various locations: home, school, work, etc). Beginning mid-day November 20th, I noticed websites were taking longer to load, and my music was choppy... Average of 33 speed tests conducted from mostly-the-same locations, from November 20th to December 7th: 0.471Mbps. WOW.
On November 20th, I logged on to MyVZW, and saw that I had consumed: 5134.2MB of DATA.
As of December 8th, I am now averaging 1.492Mbps, so we'll see how long that lasts...


Throttling exists, and it doesn't matter where you are at.... I live in a Suburb of a big city, in a town with a population of 6k but we have a lot of cell towers... Still, even at 3AM while in my home (which is PERFECTLY located between 3 towers) I was getting data throttled, and never exceeded 500kbps after hitting 5MB of data.

It is BS.

I've never been throttled so I can't really say much about this, but then again I don't use a lot of data. I'm on wifi 99% of the day, so it doesn't affect me. But like people have already stated you were promised unlimited data not speed. If people want to say "oh you're just arguing semantics" well then so is saying "it shouldn't matter where I'm using my data". If your contract says the data is only for your phone, on your phone (which it does) then there really is no justification or argument for using it everywhere else and you're (or whoever else) just arguing semantics by saying "data is data".

 

[suliman]

Since I am the OP, I will address this post. I am not a Troller. I saw the article as an interesting one and posted to the Galaxy Nexus forums to share that interest. I also started the thread because:

1. I have an OG Droid and I cannot tether to many devices because it only wifi tethers as an adhoc network. This is useless for my applications and I want a phone that will tether the way I want it to.
2. The next phone I get will have tethering options.
3. The article did not mention this was a 3rd party option, or a root option, but an ICS option.

The way it seems, since the Galaxy Nexus is primarily pure Google, then whether or not this was for GSM or CDMA based Galaxy Nexus's the options would be the same based on the fact that it's Ice Cream Sandwich, and Google's flagship device (to be untouched or mostly untouched).

I wanted to educate those who are of this forum of the potential of Wifi tethering with STOCK ICS. If the article is incorrect (you need to be rooted, you must have tethering plan, etc.) then that is not my fault, but of the author who failed to mention these important bits of information, regardless of carrier. Again, I believe this is an ICS option, and not carrier dependent.

Yes you are very mistaken. Pure Google does not imply tethering is unlocked. Google's stance on the matter is that the carrier determines whether the tethering is unlocked or not. It is a privilege that was granted on froyo and no phone advertises tethering as a standard feature because of these reasons. Again your beliefs are incorrect and several pages of misleading and pointless discussion was derived.

I know its wrong to charge people extra for this feature but considering its not illegal for vzw to do so.

Also I have an of Droid and I can wireless tether just fine and most applications work just fine with it. I can even play wow using it with a ping below 200. That's 3g though.

Sent from my DROID using DroidForums

 

[jerroedr]

eh, just root and install the app google makes for wifi teathering found at the google wiki

 

[yakitori]

Tbolt came with mobile hotspot....stock. in fact Verizon offered it free for a while till they decided on what to charge for it. That was right before they went tiered. Now they really gonna start making crap loads of money off people

Sent from my HTC ThunderBolt using DroidForums

 

[nleksan]

czerdrill -

I understand your point, and I agree. I was just getting a little "heated", and as a result I was typing faster than I was thinking

I will agree that substituting a phone's data for a household internet connection is beyond what was ever intended, no doubt about that. Where I have an issue is with the circumstances I mentioned, in particular:
1) using my phone's 3G data to stream Netflix (both of which I am paying for) and/or Pandora to the touchscreen headunit I have in my car; I do not see how that makes a difference to Verizon, as I am using the same exact data for the same exact purpose, I'm simply watching the movie on a slightly bigger screen

I'm not sure if that qualifies as "tethering", as I'm using a physical cable to connect the phone to the head-unit and the phone's OS/screen is actually controlled via the 7.x" touchscreen, which I also use to make hands-free calls and such, but the fact that this is "frowned upon" bothers me...

 

[yakitori]

czerdrill -

I understand your point, and I agree. I was just getting a little "heated", and as a result I was typing faster than I was thinking

I will agree that substituting a phone's data for a household internet connection is beyond what was ever intended, no doubt about that. Where I have an issue is with the circumstances I mentioned, in particular:
1) using my phone's 3G data to stream Netflix (both of which I am paying for) and/or Pandora to the touchscreen headunit I have in my car; I do not see how that makes a difference to Verizon, as I am using the same exact data for the same exact purpose, I'm simply watching the movie on a slightly bigger screen

I'm not sure if that qualifies as "tethering", as I'm using a physical cable to connect the phone to the head-unit and the phone's OS/screen is actually controlled via the 7.x" touchscreen, which I also use to make hands-free calls and such, but the fact that this is "frowned upon" bothers me...

I agree with this ESP in reference to my Xoom. Its not like I'm tethering and using my phone at the same time. I'm simply doing the same thing on my Xoom that I would be doing on my phone. And typically its on a road trip and the kids want to watch something or my lady wants to use the Xoom for internet browsing. Its far and few that I use tethering.



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