I don't agree that tethering should be distinct from mobile internet usage on the phone. Internet traffic is Internet traffic regardless of source or destination. If, say, the standard data plan offered a few hundred MB per month and the tethering extra extended that allowance to allow bigger downloading up to 3-5GB per month, that would be perfectly fine. It's the restricting of which device I use to access the Internet that I find an issue.
However, if I tether my iPhone for a few minutes to download a few emails here and there, there's not going to be any difference in the traffic I generate between that and using my iPhone to read my email!
(Note: I have a first-generation EDGE iPhone which would make it very difficult for me to generate large traffic on O2 unless I tried very, very hard to) |
If I may say so, that's the most balanced argument I've seen on here.
Glad to see some people can think the matter through objectively without knee-jerk reactions.
For what it's worth I fully agree. You should be able to tether within a set limit, then maybe pay extra for a higher limit. And infrequent use should not be a problem and something I doubt o2 would ever bother looking at.
However, the fact remains, for whatever reason, o2 do not allow tethering without paying for the Web Max bolt-on or the new iPhone tethering charge. So people who do that do so at the risk of paying a heavy bill if they get "found out". If folk are willing to take that risk, that's their own business IMHO.
SV
