I have unlimited cellular data on my phone but not if I use it as a hotspot. - eviltoast

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

  • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
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    8 months ago

    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!

    • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      I still feel like I should be able to sue AT&T for claiming my hotspot is “unlimited,” but after 15 gb it drops to double digit kbps. Seems like that’s a pretty hard limit

      • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
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        8 months ago

        Especially given:

        • Limited to 15GB
        • Then limited to 128kbps

        The 15GB is going to be variable based on the link speed available. If full 5G, that can be erased with 15 speed tests in a few minutes.

        From there, it’s 128kbps * 3600 (to hours) * 24 (to days) * 30 (to month) = 331,776,000 kilobits -> 41.472GB + the original 15GB -> 56.472GB is the limit each month for “unlimited”, roughly. A hard limited number.

        • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          And some douchebag could come in and say “um, actually, it’s always going to be limited because the internet speed isn’t infinite” as if the 3TB my mobile data is capable of downloading at full speed is at all comparable to the 0.05TB I can get after they rate limit me

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      8 months ago

      Yep, lack of broadband in this AirBnB I’m staying in is the only reason I was using it as a hotspot in the first place. The speed here is about the speed they’d throttle it at. I kind of had to fork over the $15 or deal with slow internet one way or the other.

      • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
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        8 months ago

        It always blows my mind going to a rental and the rental has no or lacking Internet. Yes, I’m probably on vacation, but it’s the future and life requires a few megabits. Years back I made it standard procedure to prep some kind of mobile broadband for my destination (buying a month of prepaid for a hotspot or whatever) fully expecting it to just always suck, it’s annoying that this is still a necessary procedure in 2024.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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          8 months ago

          Unfortunately, I didn’t pick it. My mother is paying. And when I asked my mother if she looked to see on the AirBnB ad if this place had high speed internet, she said, “other ads did, but this one didn’t.” Sigh.