Under the new Shared Everything plan it will be included as a "freebie" (yeah right) so you don't have to "steal hotspot data" any more. But I've always felt as have countless others that it should be free anyhow as part of the data plan as per the European, Asian, Latin American, Canadian and Russian carriers. I don't know about Australia, though I've read an aussie post on other blogs that it's free there too.
Which brings up the ethics of "stealing" by the customer, vs "bilking" by the carrier. The simple fact is, it is simply a connection to a device you own besides your phone on which to consume data which you are already paying for. So just exactly what is being "stolen" here? The only way for carriers to interfere with your reception of data you paid for si through gimping the tethering software on the phone, which American carriers insist on doing, whereas other carriers in other countries don't. So the tethering elsewhere than US works as the phone OEM's intended. Open and free.
This ticks me off no end and has for years that US carriers just can't stop making a stink about tethering and trying to bamboozle customers out the wazzoo for it. It's nice to see one carrier finally implement a plan that finally includes it but unfortunately the rest of this awful pricing on data pretty much mitigates the positive aspects of including tethering as it should have been from the beginning.
b33
