chuckles I had an ex-gf who worked on the customer service side of Sprint and we went round and round about this. There must have been some serious corporate messaging to their employees to justify tethering fees.
I will say, in the carrier's only defense: when the market demanded everyone sell vastly oversubscribed "unlimited" plans at rates that were far too low to support them... then prohibiting tethering had an argument. (As anything that promoted higher data consumption led to directly increased costs)
Now? With "unlimited w/ cap" or "data-by-the-GB" plans? Absolutely a ploy to screw customers.
Tethering fees made sense when the ability to tether was added to smartphones (officially.) The original "Unlimited" plan people signed up for was intended to be limited by the rate that the phone itself could use data, which was slow.
Tethering fees on limited plans are incredibly stupid, and just a cash grab by carriers. Luckily most major carriers have eliminated them now.
When I moved here I was surprised to know that I had to explicitly ask AT&T to enable tethering. In India, it is enabled by default and is part of your subscription, you just pay for the data depending on the plan you choose.
As it is with most countries in Europe and I think many in Asia as well (correct me if I'm wrong). This is just an example of America's hardcore capitalism where certain markets are dominated by a few key players and the only entity capable of stopping them from enacting these batshit insane anti-consumer tactics are congress who are more than happy to take their bribes whilst shafting the average American consumer.
with AT&T, there is tethering fee on everything. I'm glad that I'm no longer with AT&T though. I switched to Tmobile last summer -- my bill went down from $200/month to $130/month for three unlimited line with 10GB tether/month.
I will say, in the carrier's only defense: when the market demanded everyone sell vastly oversubscribed "unlimited" plans at rates that were far too low to support them... then prohibiting tethering had an argument. (As anything that promoted higher data consumption led to directly increased costs)
Now? With "unlimited w/ cap" or "data-by-the-GB" plans? Absolutely a ploy to screw customers.