Giffgaff & Tethering

Marky

Marky

Marky

Soldato
Joined
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Hey all,

I'm currently with O2 (£20/Month Simplicity Contract) and am very close to jumping ship to Giffgaff and using their £10/month deal which gives me 250mins, Unlimited texts & unlimited data.

Now my question is with Tethering. I don't Tether very often right now. Infact I think I've used it once when I had to travel for work and used it when I was in the hotel for browsing the web etc.

However, I hope to grab the iPad 3 soon, and it would be nice to stream a couple of movies/browse the net if I'm ever on the move. I would be getting the Wi-Fi iPad and use my iPhone to tether with it.

After a quick Google search, Giffgaff do not accept Tethering on any of their bags. But how would they know if I'm Tethering or not? If it's Unlimited Data why can't I Tether?

Muchos Gracias :)

Marky
 
I have no idea however i'd imagine they probably just keep a look out for massive data usage as this would be a clear sign.

Also i doubt you will be able to stream movies very well over 3G but surfing the net should be fine.
 
feedtheram said:
I have no idea however i'd imagine they probably just keep a look out for massive data usage as this would be a clear sign.

Also i doubt you will be able to stream movies very well over 3G but surfing the net should be fine.
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I used my iPhone last night to stream a movie (didn't end up watching the whole movie, but 10 minutes of it without any stops) from Netflix using 3G no problem. So I'm assuming it'll be okay on the move - but I haven't tested it on a train for example.
 
From a quick google, it seems they can tell if you are tethering, although if you don't abuse it surely they would turn a blind eye and rather keep an extra customer?
 
you could buy a data gigabag http://giffgaff.com/goodybags#data
There was a topic on their forums a week or so back about tethering, someone wanted to stream a movie to their phone but connect the phone to his tele, when he asked about this he was told he couldnt do it as it was against the terms, but how on earth would they know if he was doing it? he would be using the same amount of data if he was to watch the film on his phone wouldnt he?
 
It against their T&C meaning you shouldn't do it at all, they don't allow for people to tether since people would take advantage of it and go through mass amount of data.
Just follow the rules so others don't end up paying for it.(price hikes and getting rid of unlimited data)
 
FNGsam said:
From a quick google, it seems they can tell if you are tethering, although if you don't abuse it surely they would turn a blind eye and rather keep an extra customer?
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I don't know how they would know whether I'm watching a movie (or doing whatever) on my iPad or my iPhone... Like you say, maybe if I just do it occasionally it wouldn't be a problem.

Anyone know what happens if they say you've been Tethering? I.e. Do you get kicked off the network forever?

mjones1 said:
It against their T&C meaning you shouldn't do it at all, they don't allow for people to tether since people would take advantage of it and go through mass amount of data.
Just follow the rules so others don't end up paying for it.(price hikes and getting rid of unlimited data)
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lol :rolleyes:

SimonCHere said:
Oh and slightly more importantly, they don't have any facility to allow your iPhone to tether anyway. Unless you're jailbroken?
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Of course I'm jailbroken :p
 
Marky said:
I used my iPhone last night to stream a movie (didn't end up watching the whole movie, but 10 minutes of it without any stops) from Netflix using 3G no problem. So I'm assuming it'll be okay on the move - but I haven't tested it on a train for example.
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Ah i thought you were talking about on the move.

The problem comes when you move from one cell tower to another so if you aren't moving then it will be ok if you have a good signal. As soon as you move into a different cell you will momentarily lose connection and it will stutter - not to mention tunnels!

I'm sure someone else will be able to give a better explanation than that but i would forget about streaming video on a train.
 
feedtheram said:
Ah i thought you were talking about on the move.

The problem comes when you move from one cell tower to another so if you aren't moving then it will be ok if you have a good signal. As soon as you move into a different cell you will momentarily lose connection and it will stutter - not to mention tunnels!

I'm sure someone else will be able to give a better explanation than that but i would forget about streaming video on a train.
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Hmm that's a little disappointing... I'll give it a try but I'm sure you're right...

Videos aside... I should be okay to surf the net on an iPad tethered with my iPhone right?
 
Russinating said:
Because the browser/data request is completely different.
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Yeah... browser user agent strings will tell GiffGaff you're using an iPad rather than an iPhone. There are ways around this however on advanced browsers (not sure about the iPad's browser).
 
Russinating said:
Because the browser/data request is completely different.
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chiggz said:
Yeah... browser user agent strings will tell GiffGaff you're using an iPad rather than an iPhone. There are ways around this however on advanced browsers (not sure about the iPad's browser).
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Hmm interesting... and if I'm honest, slightly disappointing...

Doesn't the browser data only go to the site you're visiting and not the mobile ISP (I may be grasping at straws here :p)
 
Alright so basically to conclude... I could tether okay but don't use it so much so that they investigate your account and see you've been using an iPad :p Or I'm sure there is a funky jailbreak tool to use to mask the iPad browser request and use an iPhone browser request instead.

Either way thanks for your replies.
 
Yeah there probably is.

Just for the record, I have a Galaxy Nexus, so pretty big screen. I therefore don't like "mobile" versions of websites, so I've forced my default phone browser to send the User Agent string as a desktop browser. Also on GiffGaff, but have not heard anything about it.

That said, I think I only rack up about 200-300mb per month as I hardly browse 'on the move'.
 
I'm on giff gaff and tether my iPad to my iPhone using pdanet. Never had any problems but I can only use it to browse the net. For some reason it won't let me connect to liveonlinefooty or connect to Facebook or eBay apps.
 
Liverlee said:
I'm on giff gaff and tether my iPad to my iPhone using pdanet. Never had any problems but I can only use it to browse the net. For some reason it won't let me connect to liveonlinefooty or connect to Facebook or eBay apps.
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Free version of pdanet doesnt allow you to access https secure connections, only http. Logic says facebook and ebay will use https protocols
 
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