Strange Three UK internet behaviour

kn100

kn100

kn100

Associate
Joined
27 Dec 2011
Posts
142
Hello all. I have always been on the £12.90 a month AYCE plan and I've always sneakily tethered using every phone I've owned. I've had a ZTE Skate, A Huawei G300, A ZTE Grand X, and most recently a Nexus 4.

I can tether NO PROBLEM. In fact, I can tether and get absolutely insane speed. This isn't even an irregular result. The speeds I get are fantastic.
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I have a friend who recently got The EXACT SAME Contract as me but he is using a HTC Wildfire. When he attempts to use the inbuilt stock tethering application, in the same way I do, he gets the trademark "LOL U AINT PAYIN FOR TETHERIN" message. The SECOND he attempts to access any website he gets the message. I've been doing this for close to a year now and I've never seen this warning once. It's not even as if they've accidentally put tethering on my account as I've changed sim a couple of times in the past (as in I keep multiple sims for 3 active) and none have the issue. My sim in his phone gets detected instantly but his sim in my phone works fine.

My question is this. How do they detect him so quickly yet they never ever detect me? I take 0 precautions. Could it be the fact I'm running stock AOSP and he's running HTC BS Sense on Gingerbread?
 
How long have you been on that tariff for? It might be that when you took it out tethering was allowed, but for newer customers it's not.
 
You'll probably find that the HTC has some sort of setting which tells the network what he is doing. When he does it, it says no. All depends how the phone's software is set up I guess.
 
Don't know specifics for these phones / software versions. But some phones (notably the iPhone) send tethering data over a different access point, essentially allowing the network to charge extra for this service.

Some phones and indeed Jailbroken iPhones with Tethering apps get around this by simply using the default data connection you use for browsing on the phone so the network can't easily know if you're tethering.

I imagine your phone acts like the latter, and his the former.
 
It would depend on the device you tether to it too as well as how the tether app works (it might deliberately do some finicky stuff to the stack)
 
I've had that £12.90 monthly contract with 3 for about 2 months and was able to tether from my Nexus 4 when I went to somebody's house recently to register a bunch of software for them.
 
On 12.9/m tariff tethering didn't work then I bought the £5 tethering add on(didn't work straight away had to call them up to enable it) and used it heavily for 2 months I cancelled it last month and tethering still works, I made sure it's a new monthly cycle. Might be worth it to try buy it for 1 month then cancel it.
 
I took my contract out literally a month before he did, before that I had the £15 AYCE PAYG deal.

We're testing it through a VPN now, if this doesn't work then I think we'll be rooting his phone.
 
...His phone while tethering appears to block VPNs while mine doesn't.....What the hell is going on here hahaha

We both have identical APN settings.
 
This could be phone related, my s2 would always block me, even thou I was rooted and had a custom rom. My Nexus 4 is working perfectly fine (just tested it).
 
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