[blush]

I'm on the sim only PAYG at £15 a month and the personal hotspot appears to work fine. Do you think I am ok to use this or are three likely to find out and stop me? I am so far very impressed with three after being an O2 customer for about ten years. I get good 3g coverage in some of the smaller Kent villages where I struggle to get anything on o2.

The only thing stopping me change completely to three is the fact I'm on an old simplicity tariff and can use my 1000 text a month at a ratio of 4-1 worldwide. I get unlimited data with O2 but I guess they have some sort of FUP. Having a three sim in my iPhone four makes the whole iPhone experience a pleasure rather than a chore with O2.

[Hands0n]

You are likely to get away with using the service like this for a while. But eventually you are likely to get spotted and then will be in breach of their Ts&Cs relating to AYCE on PAYG. The only tariffs Three permit tethering (hotspot) is the contract 12mth and 30-day The One Plan.

So, enjoy it while you can. But be prepared to receive a bit of a stern frowning from Three :D

[billynibbles]

When I recently bought my Wildfire outright from a Three store, along with a £15 AYCE PAYG SIM, the member of staff told me that as long as the phone had at least Androind 2.2, which it did, tethering was OK, and that was before I told him I was going to put my contract SIM in it.

[blush]

I bloke at my work has an Android phone which is PAYG and hasn't had credit for months. He uses the phone to tether to his laptop and he spends ages on Twitter, facebook, youtube, sport sites all with no credit at all. I tethered my pc to my phone at the weekend and was blown away by the speed.

[Hands0n]

Blimey! Your work colleague needs to keep schtum about that :D He's got the holy grail of mobile data there :)

[blush]

Do you think Three can keep offering The One Plan long term, seems almost too good to be true compared to other networks. When you compare other tariffs say on O2 and they call 1gb of data "The Works" it is quite laughable. I have tethered my iPad with my Nokia E51 now and I get a more reliable connection than with Sky BB. I get almost no buffering at all when watching live tv compared to a fair bit with Sky. I am concerned I will sign up and find they increase the price of the one plan or limit the AYCE.

[Hands0n]

Yes, I can definitely see Three offering TOP with AYCE indefinitely. Their network is built for data, and if they (or any) network is serious about LTE in the next few years then their core network needs to be completely data capable - because that is what LTE is. Three have little of the legacy technology that the other networks have gathered over the years. And their director-level approach to business is to compete in a space that has been created by the other networks, namely mobile data.

I think it is inevitable that prices will increase as all of the costs of providing services increase based on energy prices. But they will be very unlikely to re-introduce FUP caps on AYCE, that would be a major PR failure.

If anything, Three are positioning themselves for the next step, that being to deliver steadily increasing HSPA+ speeds as more terminal devices come into the market. And that, in turn, will position them to deal with the commercial requirements of LTE when that arrives. I suspect that the other mobile operators will approach LTE with a confused and complex series of tariffs, caps and FUPs to constrain the usage of their core networks.