Mildly Infuriating

Root your phone and you can manage which APN is used by tethering. If you can't do this consider trying a connecting to a VPN before enabling tethering, the connection will on some devices remain active on the normal APN because changing would disconnect the VPN and keeping connected is higher priority than updating the APN. Also USB tethering and WIFI tethering may behave differently.

In the end this is a good argument for better regulation. When you buy a car they don't get to extract more money from you because you drive out of state or use it for business. The fact that telecommunications companies have so much power and access to basically monitor what you are doing and bill accordingly is insane. You should pay for a service with a simple and clear contract and all this crap should be made illegal.

Every carrier has it's problems but AT&T and Verizon are a nickel and diming rip off. They suck.

I've been using SecureTether https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.panjava.internet.sharing.tethering.mobile.hotspot.secure.wifi.securetether to get around it. Requires a bit of setup but works without issues after.

I dont believe something like this is possible on iOS.

I have been bypassing this with Pdanet app for over 10 years. I don't think the app gets regular updates anymore, but it has worked for me on many different phones, and windows versions. Also different carriers.

Doesn't have to be usb either, I use the wifi direct setting it has and have used 100gb in a month. With minimal or no slowdown.

I still use it almost daily, as fiber or any other form of internet isn't available in my area besides satellite (not talking about starlink). I also play online games usually 80 latency, which sucks, but better than nothing.

The difference is one hop. I think that’s how ISP’s measure it anyway. I’ll bet spoofing that number would bypass the restriction.

Or I’m hopelessly out of date.

I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but I kind of get this one. Unlimited data on your phone is constrained a bit because it's your phone. If you make your phone a hotspot and the whole family is using it to watch videos and stuff (and not paying for their own data plan), that's a pretty big difference to the infrastructure needs.

At home i have a FWA over 5G (mobile) with 1Tb/month of traffic cap. That can be raised by 200Gb if needed. Cost 24€/month.

On mobile I have 150Gb capped 3G/4G/5G (whatever works) for 7.99€/month.

Not bad deals in comparison with what I read here.

the reason is wireless network carve outs from network neutrality and them wanting to abuse their monopoly status to upcharge you for every little thing

I've read somewhere that USB tethering bypasses this very easily.