The $100/month 1Gbps plan used to be $70/month and ATT just includes the additional $30 to make it unlimited.

There was a short period of time when the old $70/m plan includes unlimited data, which is what I'm using.

> It doesn't allow tethering though.

How would they even make a distinction? Does Apple comply with carriers in this regard?

Yes, both Android and iOS respect carrier policies for this. There's a carrier-configuration bundle loaded from the carrier which can set a bunch of things, including the access point names (APNs) for data. The carrier can choose to set separate APNs for mobile data and tethered data, and can choose whether to lock those settings or make them user-editable.

If you root the phone, of course, you can just change the tethering APN to the data APN, but I don't believe current versions of either Android or iOS let users do it without rooting, if your carrier has marked it non-editable. An Apple support page notes that you "can only edit or view your APN on your iPhone and iPad if your carrier allows it": https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201699.

Just as a counterpoint to some of the people talking about how they use far more than a terabyte per month:

I work fully remotely, video chat often, have someone else in the house watching netflix a lot. I stream music while working. I download large software packages often. 1TB is plenty for me.

A terabyte is a reasonable cap I think. If you want more, you can pay for unlimited data as described in the parent post.

That’s great. You state you have two people in your household. Have a couple of kids and add several more devices that play games, download apps and updates, stream hours of video, and get to download ever increasing ads. I bet that 1 TB wouldn’t be very adequate anymore.

Or, just wait 5 more years. Those files you remotely access will be even bigger, your video chats use even more bandwidth as quality increases, and Netflix defaults to 4K for nearly all content.

They’re playing the long game here. They put these data caps in place realizing full well that 90% of people won’t hit them today but in 5-10 years when 90% of customers do hit the caps they’ll cry out about how the caps have been in place for years and were never an issue. You’re playing right into their hand.

Even the highest-bitrate 4K streaming takes 90hours/month.

If you have a family of screen-locked people never leaving home and constantly consuming more input that their senses can possibly absorb, maybe it's OK to pay a little more than 95-99% of households do?

Even if the per-person usage is normla or healthy, why should my sigle-person usage subsidize your 4-person usage?

> Or, just wait 5 more years.

When caps are higher? Comcat has been raising caps over time, from 300GB/month to 1TB/month so far.

> Netflix defaults to 4K for nearly all content.

Why would Netflix do that? It is epensive for them for 0 value for 95+% of consumers who have neiether the TVs nor the living rooms nor the eyes nor the content information to perceive 4K content.

Your 90 hours/month figure is only 3 hours/day. It doesn’t exactly take a ‘screen-locked’ household to consume 3 hours/day. I would imagine most households with any number of kids greater than 0 easily consume more than that.

Also, why would they continue to increase caps? For the first time in their history the cable companies are losing video subscribers like crazy and they’re losing them to over-the-top services. They’re going to keep datacaps right where they are and use them to recapture that lost revenue rather than actually attempt to fix the issues consumers have with bundled channels and linear programming.

You do bring an interesting point about having tiers. Currently there aren’t any tiers. There’s the ‘normal’ rate capped at 1 TB and it’s already pretty high IMHO without constantly fighting for an intro rate and then there’s the unlimited rate for nearly double. I just don’t think if you want to play the tiered game that your ‘normal’ rate should be capped at what an average household can be expected to routinely consume.

In the end it doesn’t matter what consumers want or are willing to pay for though because as we all know broadband is at best a duopoly for the vast majority of households so you just get what you get. And that’s whatever XFINITY (maybe they won’t realize it’s still the same shitty Comcast!) decides you get.

came to say this. you might not think a 1TB cap is onerous now...

So the average hours of tv watched per person in the us is 4 or 5 depending on what study you go by.

I am just going to go off netflix's GB/hour figures. 3GB/hour for HD or 7GB/hour for 4k.

If you refuse to watch in 4k then you won't touch your cap because you are looking at 360-450gb/month.

However if you have bought a tv in the last few years it is likely a 4k tv because why not. Mine was a 55" smart tv for $350 about 2 years ago. Ive seen 4k tv's for under $200.

4k puts those numbers to 840-1050gb/month.

For 1 person. Now imagine a family that does not always watch the same thing.

1TB is designed to be a cap that is more than enough for anybody EXCEPT a cord cutter. If you decide to go with a streaming only tv plan kiss your bandwidth goodby.

The cord cutter who watches everything in 4k?

A big thing you're missing is games. I've just looked at my Xbox One:

* Hitman 2 - 104GB

* Elder Scrolls Online - 103GB

* Halo 5 - 99GB

* Forza 7 - 99GB

* Destiny 2 - 89GB

* Quantum Break - 160GB (including episodes which you would otherwise have to stream)

And it's pulling 34GB in updates (two games: 27GB + 7GB) without me even knowing (without explicitly checking). A single game using 10% of my cap is not reasonable IMO.

4K video too, which is only going to grow. And maybe cloud game streaming like xCloud/Stadia.

Funny how the only comment expressing lack of dissatisfaction is down voted