Sprint to Customers: No More Freeloading Unlimited Data wih Tethered Phones

Sprint has made yet another change to their mobile broadband plans. Subscribers to Sprint's mobile broadband data plans have endured a series of painful changes dated back to October of 2011. Starting in October of last year, the company decided that starting in November 2011 they would no longer have unlimited access to Sprint's own 3g network as well as Clearwire's mobile WiMax network. Upon the new change Sprint then also notified the customers of the new price plans which also affected tablets broadband data usage. The new mobile broadband charges then ranged from $50 per month for a 6g of combined 3G EV-DO and 4G WiMAX data and $80 per month for 12 GB of combined 3G EV-DO and 4G  WiMAX.

As you have probably have seen in the advertisements, Sprint is still alive and kicking with "Truly Unlimited Data" - the kicker with Sprint's unlimited data is that it''s only available for Sprint Smartphones, NOT mobile hotspots, and data modems. As you might imagine, this policy led some crafty users to figure out ways to "tether" their smartphone, which simply means that the phone acts as a mobile hotspot that can share the unlimited data among many devices. Tethering is very much frowned upon by Sprint, likely  for financial reasons, but smartphone tethering is typically enabled by using Android Apps that support tethering, or with a jailbroken iPhone that may utilize the "gray market" Cydia based tethering IOS apps. In effect, users of the unsanctioned "smartphone-as-a-mobile-hotspot" are able to connect multiple devices to the 3G and 4G mobile networks using the (still remaining) Sprint Unlimited Data provision for phones - somewhat of the holy grail of mobile hotspots nowadays.

This newest plan has now changed and subscribers have been notified of a new change that will take effect in June. The subscribers have now been told that the once unlimited usage has "always been a 5g limit" (Sprint's words). Sprint has stated that the subscribers have always known the limit, the charges will simply now be instated on their bill when the subscriber goes over the limit. The subscribers were sent out email and texts of the new change. It alerted the customers that as of their next bill in July 2012 if they should exceed the current 5g cap they would be charged 0.05 per megabyte for overages. This cap will apply to EV-DO, WiMAX services provided by Sprint. The change may also impact those subscribers using Sprints LTE services as well. The deal that most signed up for was an unlimited amount of data streaming through the creation of a portable hotspot, for $30 a month. Once many questioned the new change, Sprint did state that "they always were under a 5g cap", effective June 2012 all subscribers would now know the changes would affect their billing.

This limit is very low in comparison to what many users were using.
Sadly Sprint has changed the structure of their billing programs and thus lost a number of customers that were happy under the advertised and truly unlimited mobile hotspot plan. Now with this change, the customers are left searching for the original plan of unlimited data allowance that now will be charged to their accounts.