[Timothee]

Some specific points of the new pricing are really outrageous honestly. The fact that they do tiered-pricing is, while annoying, kind of their prerogative. It actually sounds like it could save me a few bucks.

However, paying $20 (!) to have access to tethering without extra bandwidth, is complete non-sense. I just can't find a reasonable explanation for this. As well as the price for extra data for DataPlus plan: $15 gives you 200MB, whereas $10 gives you 1GB if you are on the DataPro from the start. I also assume they won't have roll-over data: if you use less, you lose, if you use more, you lose.

Finally, having data caps impedes on the benefit from getting multi-tasking. Besides a faster switch between apps, the point is to have apps stay connected while you're doing something else. (think Pandora) If you start thinking about your data usage, you'll have to think about what's actually running. Exactly what Apple didn't want you to do.

[lutorm]

The tethering thing irks me too. If I pay to get 2gb of data, AT&T has no business telling me what kind of information my 2gb constitute. This is a blatant violation of net neutrality, so it seems that when (if?) these services get reclassified as network providers then these sorts of things will never holdup.

[liedra]

A friend of mine who works for Apple told me (a year or so ago) that the reason for this is because ATT (and similar companies in other countries) wants to discourage tethering due to the fact that they don't have the infrastructure to accommodate lots of high bandwidth connections that you use when you tether. They were gambling on the fact that you need to do a lot more "work" at the moment still to browse/etc. on your phone. But this was before multitasking -- I can only bet they were throwing their hands up in dismay when multitasking came in :)

[Timothee]

I can understand this idea when it's an unlimited plan: if you tether, you're likely to use a lot more bandwidth than with just your phone. So, if you tether, you'll impact the infrastructure.

But since they're limiting your bandwidth already, I'm not so sure why it matters if you use it from a laptop or from your phone.

In the end, I know why they're doing it: because they can, and because they want to limit the number of people who do it. It just bothers me because it doesn't make sense technically.