I joined three on the £12.90 tariff, added £5 tethering, which then got blocked once i cleared a gig of tethering (tho i was using a Windows 8 tablet). Threatened to leave (hadnt even been with them two weeks), they offered me the One package for £21 with truely unlimited tethering. Been happy since.
Tethering (probly been asked before)
- Thread starter Simian
- Start date
Three do allow tethering on their One plans (PAYG and contract). We're in a new build house and VM haven't finished finalising their cable lay. Everything's in place now (finally after 8 months) but they haven't added our address to their database yet. In the meantime we've been tethering to a Three PAYG sim via an Android handset and pull literally tens of GB a month (including downloads via NNTP). Some nights I pull 20GB at once overnight at 20Mbps!
From Three's blog:
I double checked with the manager of a local Three store and he said it was fine, fill your boots. Works for us.
EDIT: On Three you'd need to top up with £15 a month and use it to buy the £15 bundle which is the cheapest one which incorporates all you can eat data. Definitely do NOT go with GiffGaff their service is appalling. I was banned off the network for using 'too much' data at 2GB in a month non-tethered. Apparently my peak time usage was too high. Pathetic!
3 will start severely throttling your connection if you do a lot tethering downloads during peak times ie evenings, even on the One Plan.
It's 10am Saturday as I type this and I'm pulling down a file at c600k/s but I can guarantee you that that will drop to nothing under throttling conditions. If you're a regular heavy user during peak times, they throttle you so badly, that even loading basic internet pages take about 5-10 seconds a page. I kid you not.
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I think your right, as GiffGaff currently monitor it based on data usage. The main networks will be using the DPI method then, I would expect. Its instantly detectable on Three, if you use a contract without tethering and connect a laptop you immediately get taken to a "Tethering is blocked, by one of these packages to enable it" landing page.
I wonder if the DPI method is only available to the main network providers, and not the virtual providers? As Virgin and GiffGaff both seem to not be using the DPI method.