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I get what you are saying, but that analogy fails as well. There is a physical limit to how much one person can eat, while there is no limit to how much someone
by ringshall 7y ago
I get what you are saying, but that analogy fails as well. There is a physical limit to how much one person can eat, while there is no limit to how much someone might take home.
Whereas with data, there is no limit intrinsic to tethering vs in-phone.
More to the point, in practice, people can easily use as much data in-phone as on a laptop, due to streaming video. Think, for example, of someone streaming music via YouTube for hours on end.
- OJFord 7y agoThere's the same limit on possible data usage as there as on possible food haulage: throughput.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoTethering automatically subjects you to exactly the same throughput limit the phone already had; the phone needs to personally make each request.
- scarejunba 7y agoIt's a usage pattern thing, not a physical capability thing. It's why I like Google Fi. I don't have any of these arguments. I'm just fully metered and there aren't any restrictions.
- i_am_proteus 7y agoIf you set up a hotspot so your friends can all (anti-socially) stream separate videos, that scales up beyond what one user would consume.
- Domenic_S 7y agoBut you can never exceed the throughput of the phone.
- gok 7y ago> More to the point, in practice, people can easily use as much data in-phone as on a laptop, due to streaming video. Think, for example, of someone streaming music via YouTube for hours on end. There are actually several tricks to make video streaming efficient for phones. The top sites are aggressively throttled [1]. This is harder to do for laptops, where users are typically connecting to corporate VPNs and stuff. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-04/youtube-and-netflix-throttled-by-carriers-research-finds https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-04/youtube-a...
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI agree with you overall, but not this reasoning. Smartphones can connect to VPN's as well.
- darkpuma 7y agoThey can, but is it as common in practice? (I earnestly don't know.)
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoEvery VPN provider I'm aware of offers either a mobile app or set up instructions for Android and iOS. So while that doesn't really answer your question, I suspect there's a non-insignificant number of mobile VPN users.
- bradknowles 7y agoSure. And anyone who uses a VPN can get themselves limited, just like they were using a laptop, because the carrier thinks you're trying to hide something from them.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoHave you ever heard of on-phone VPN use being detected as tethering? I'd expect the victims of this to be quite upset!
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoDoes it matter whether the limit is physical or practical? On average, people use much less data when it's confined to a single phone than when they can share it with laptops. Here's a different analogy that might work better: I can shop at Costco as much as I want, and I can even buy things for other people, but I cannot literally give my Costco card to someone else and let them shop at the store on their own.
- Retric 7y agoNot when they are also charging you by the bit transferred. People also deal with various data caps when tethering, they just now also deal with an extra bill for a service provided by their phone not the phone company.
- tinus_hn 7y agoMuch more people are going to transfer a lot of data using a computer than using a phone. An hour of YouTube on a phone is only about a gigabyte, think of how quickly you download that on a laptop.