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Is there a charge for Tethering?

  • 5 July 2018
  • 5 replies
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Userlevel 1
I've search on the internet for whether tethering is allowed on iD. I found a page on this forum that said that it is against terms of service but is possible to do at your own risk. My questions are:

  1. What are the consequences of breaking the terms of service
  2. If I tether and stay below my mobile data allowance limit, will I be charged extra?
  3. I have found stories online about people being charged large amounts such as £70 for tethering as little as 2GB, is this the case?
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Best answer by Mohammed 6 July 2018, 15:15

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5 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +10
Hello @jeff21jeff,

Welcome to the iD Community.

Whilst the Terms & Conditions advise not to Tether, it's not explicitly a case of
"do it and you will face repercussions"


There isn't a punishment for tethering to answer the first question. We simply don't provide support for it, so where some customer's have advised they could not get it working, as it's not a feature we support, we can't help in getting it set up. I hope that better clarifies this for you.

Leading onto the second, If you tether and stay within your mobile data allowance, you will not be charged extra. The charge is applied when you go over your inclusive data.

In regards to the last point, you're seeing stories from customers who are on older plans from us and have not set up a cap.

When iD Mobile first began, there were 3 plans.
ShockProof, GoTo and Takeaway.
This is where ShockProof was the only plan that could apply a spend cap of £5.00 on.
GoTo was the only plan that allowed data rollover and Takeaway being the only plan that allowed Roaming.

Since then, we've had much feedback and implemented many changes (also there was the whole EU Inclusive Roaming change).

What we did was, all new plans got Data Rollover, Inclusive EU Roaming & the ability to cap.
But the cap still had to be set up manually and so it was found people who weren't monitoring their usage went over and incurred charges for data usage outside of their plan.

The charge for this is £0.1024 per MB of data used which is a flat rate charge (works out at £10.24 for every 100Mb) and can be exceeded quickly.

Around November 2017, after listening to our customers. we rolled out a new feature which would cap all new plans purchased from us at a default of £5.00,

The stories you're reading as for customers on older plans who have gone over their data and incurred charges, when realistically, it's not possible by default to get a huge £70.00 bill as we've put measures in place.

From what you've advised above, It seems that you're already on the ball and would actively measure your data, further to this, if your plan doesn't already have a £5.00 spend cap set, we'd recommend doing this now in the app/account.

Once done, if you did accidentally go over your data, it'll be capped at £5.00, thus preventing you from incurring a really high bill.

I hope that this helps re-assure you somewhat and answers your query.

We'd always recommend monitoring usage and simply advise against Tethering because of how fast you can use up your allowances. It shouldn't be as quick for most of our new plans having much more data (such as our latest 30GB plans) but entirely depends on what you use it for.

Confused.com have a great calculator that actually estimates what you can get out of your data also.

tl;dr
You can use Tethering we just advise against it
If you can't get it to work, we wouldn't provide support on how to do this
Set up a £5.00 cap if you haven't already got this
Monitor your usage to ensure you don't go over
Data can be used up very quickly when thethering

Mohammed
Userlevel 1
thank you so much for such a comprehensive reply

I think it’s a shocking cop-out that you don’t offer customer support for “MiFi” devices… there simply isn’t an acceptable excuse for such a policy; the only possible reasons for it are all based around cost-cutting, and not improving customer service.

 

ID’s network is 99% provisioned by Three, so there is literally no technical reasons why you don’t support it (Three actively do, and so should you).

 

Do your tech-support staff have insufficient technical knowledge to support this feature, or is it simply because MiFi users on unlimited data plans would force ID to pay for more bandwidth from Three? Either way (or both ways, more likely) investment to improve customer service is ALWAYS the best policy, whereas simply ignoring this sector of your customer base, is pretty obnoxious and unprofessional, if you ask me… which, of course, you didn’t, so I’ll b****r off.

Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Hey @Nils,

We’re always taking feedback on board and especially more so when this relates to customer service.

The point you’re making doesn’t relate to customer service, rather a service on the network.

 

MiFi users are not a huge sector, but a small minority. I’m not saying that’s the reason for not supporting this but just pointing out.

 

We did offer MiFI dongles with DATA only SIM cards.

It’s something we have since stopped providing.

 

Our network comprises of SIM-only customers and handset contracts mainly, with a small portion of PAYG users topping up and using bundles.

Tethering isn’t something we actively support but if you can get it working, you’re welcome to do so.

 

Our SIM cards are supported to use in handsets and those on our compatible list.

It’s not supported for MiFi devices, iPads, car systems. 

That’s not stopped people using them in such devices and getting them to work, but we haven’t tested these and approved them, therefore if it doesn’t work, it’s not something we support with.

I appreciate that this may not be the answer you want and if Three UK are a network who fully support this and provide support on this side, this may be the better option for yourself.

 

We can’t cater to every feature of everything but we do our best to offer our customers the most value for money.

Three UK don’t offer data rollover on their SIM contracts, but that doesn’t mean they’ve “copped out” by not offering this.

 

We thank you anyway for your feedback and we hope sometime in the future there’s more support for Tethering and the SIM cards approved for more devices, it’s just not something we offer currently.

 

Mohammed

Userlevel 7
Badge +10
thank you so much for such a comprehensive reply

You're welcome @jeff21jeff,

I'm pleased I was able to help answer your question!

Mohammed

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