Tethering from a smart phone or iPhone...?

[xbl0x180]

Hey, I just lost my free Internet after years of piggybacking off someone else's connection. So now I am stuck without Internet at home. I am currently looking at getting a service and cringe at the fact I may have to go with cocks cable service (one of the worst in the US). A couple of people told me about tethering a telephone and using that telephone as a "hotspot." However, I countered their bright-eyed optimism with the fact that: 1) I have a grandfathered unlimited plan with AT&T and 2) AT&T will take me out of the grandfathered unlimited plan to activate a tethering service. Not just that, but if AT&T and the powers that be ever find out I am using the telephone as a hotspot device, they will kick me out or charge me more for data usage. I believe their own plan limits it to 2GB per month, which would limit me to downloading one pr0n movie for a whole month

Is there something I am missing out on in not going along with this "tethering" thing. I just don't see it as a permanent solution to my Internet problem. Help me, Obi-wan

[brokenhalo]

A friend of mine went through the exact same thing a few months ago. The solution: jailbreak your iphone. Install a program that allows you to use your phone as a tether. I think the one he uses is called "tether me" or something. At&t caps their unlimited plans at 3gb a month and then they throttle your speed. As long as you don't go nuts, they won't notice.

Also, look into plug-ins for your browser that will help keep your usage down. Stuff like adblock, disabling flash, java, etc. i'm sure someone else will chime in with suggestions on that front

[xbl0x180]

Um, whenever I am not downloading 100GBs worth of manga, I am downloading 300GBs worth of music, books, and pr0n. I don't need 3GB per month. I need to be able to download 300GB per month. Thanks for confirming the downloading cap on AT&T

[null1024]

Yeah, you're going to have to bite the bullet and get a proper service provider if you're going to do anything more than very light usage. Even if you do get proper tethering.

I was stuck like this for a few weeks, and to prevent AT&T from yelling at me about tethering, I would SSH into my phone and SSH from there into a shell account I had for internet. The usage is extremely light in that case, because you're just browsing the internet with Links.

I was using SSH to keep my usage down, I get only 300MB/month, so downloading whole pages would be a minimum 512kB/page with images.
And downloading things on the shell account meant that once I did get proper internet, I could download my things from there.

Right now, I have AT&T U-Verse for my home internet, and they're okay. Had some problems with speed earlier on with them, but that went away pretty quickly. Not as fast as cable though.