Sorry, I was not clear in my statement.
I have a budget line with Comcast that permits 1 and only 1 connection. The terms and conditions of service clearly state that it is not permitted to use any device to enable more than the one approved device through their network. If my desktop were to die now I could get back on the internet with my laptop AFTER I call Comcast and have them update their permitted MAC address list.(1) (2)
They offer a higher priced service which does not have the one computer restriction.
I had unlimited tethering with Sprint for a while at about $25-$30/month. (Was pleased, wasn't using it enough to justify the cost.) Their terms of service are also very explicit: Pay the fee and tether away, let us catch you using a 3rd party app and we will react to it.
Both firms, and every other player in the game, will have their lawyers and the local constabulary jumping all over you with both feet for a crime generally called "Theft of Service" or similar. If you doubt this statement then go read your terms of service carefully; it's in there. This typically results in you paying them a LOT more for the service than if you had paid for it. Like most business operations in a capitalist economic model they use the "Mafia Model" of operation to guarantee thier income stream: They make it too painful to NOT do business their way.
Please be sure I am NOT telling you not to use a 3rd party app to get free tethering.(3) All I'm aiming at here is raising your awareness that the power structures in place have declared this to be a penalty-bearing course of action.
Skeezy Ratty Troll
(1) For the non-techies, that is a Media Address Control identifier that is ALWAYS unique across a network and is normally unique across the Internet. This is the physical address that the logical address we call an IP address maps back to.
(2) I'm 99% confident I can snarf Comcast's box into allowing multiple connections through it. My confidence level for hiding evidence of the snarfing drops below 50% when I factor in the
Narus boxes they have sitting in the main fiber hubs.
(3) As an aside on the subject, these folks are not raising their prices merely because they can, though that is always a factor. The main reason the telcos are raising the cost is they have to do so in order to maintain their stock profitability and dividends to their investors. This is becoming an issue now because so many of us have dropped land line service. Telcos are still required to maintain that huge copper infrastructure despite its dropping usage level. To gain and maintain new customers they must grow the new network while continuing to pay for the old.
