AT&T to Crackdown on Unauthorized Tethering

If you’ve enabled tethering on your iPhone through less than legitimate means, you may have received a nasty email earlier in the week from AT&T. A portion of the message reads: “Our records show that you use this capability (referring to tethering), but are not subscribed to our tethering plan.” The letter continues to explain that if users do not cease unauthorized tethering by March 27th, their plans will automatically be moved to the premium DataPro + Tethering plan. This plan—which costs an additional $20 per month—affords users an additional 2 GB over the standard 2 GB included with the non-tethering DataPro plan. This warning was sent to users tethering on jailbroken devices as well as jailbroken users using the popular MyWi hotspot Cydia app.

AT&T is purposely vague with details on how they’ve detected unauthorized tethering, as tipping their hand would undoubtably allow the tech community to circumvent their infrastructure once again. While numerous threads have emerged with speculation as to how the wireless carrier is detecting tethering, no definitive conclusion has been reached.

The crackdown emails have elicited a flurry of responses from the iPhone community—the majority of them overwhelmingly negative. Many users argue that the amount of data you’re allocated on a monthly basis is yours to do whatever you want with. It’s the same amount of data, why should it matter that a computer is using some of it in addition to an iPhone? While this argument is perfectly justifiable in the case of the capped DataPlus and DataPro plans, the thousands still using grandfathered Unlimited Plans present a bit more of an issue. As web activity on a Mac typically consumes more data than mobile browsing, there is not much in place to stop Unlimited Plan users from using large amounts of data when tethering. Some users have even cut off their ISPs in favor of using the slightly slower but cheaper iPhone tethering. These types of users present a big problem for AT&T who struggles with maintaining network performance as is. It is certainly these types of users who wear the biggest targets on their backs and garnered AT&T’s attention.

What does this mean for the jailbreak enthusiast who may have experimented off and on with unauthorized tethering? Not much. Though AT&T seems to be quite serious with their claims, they do not appear to want to penalize anyone. The letter clearly states that if users with unauthorized tethering enabled discontinue using it by the 27th, no plan changes or additional charges will be accrued.