I don't think telcos are all that fussed about the minority of people who use faking apps compared with the amount of money they can sting people for by charging extra to allow tethering. UK telcos certainly manage to block tethering when you've not paid for it - or even when you have paid for it but exceeded your monthly allowance.
> even when you have paid for it but exceeded your monthly allowance
Is this monthly allowance specific for tethering only?
Otherwise that's another problem entirely. Restrictions after exceeding the monthly allowance is OK, after all that's what you're paying for. But if I'm paying for 1 GB per month of data, then I expect to use 1 GB of data unrestricted because I'm paying for it.
And if that 1 GB of data comes with a fine print, then shouldn't consumer laws come into play, at least in the EU?
In Romania, a local career was fined for false advertising a while back because they were promising 600 free minutes, while at the same time the indivisible billing unit was 6 or 10 minutes (instead of per second after the first minute, as everybody else was doing it). Wouldn't such laws work for data too?
Yeah - I have "unlimited" data (I'm averaging about 8GB/month) but only 1GB a month of allowed tethering. Once I go over that 1GB, it stops working until the next billing cycle - other telcos do things like cut the bandwidth to a trickle or only allow it off-peak.
Consumer laws about fine print appear to have no teeth when it comes to UK mobile telcos (who e.g. are legally allowed to advertise 1GB a month as "unlimited")
even so, that problem is just as easily worked around with a browser extension to mimic mobile browser user agent or headers. Granted that could result in our receiving content formatted for a mobile browser but im sure someone could work around that. Also if the site is designed responsively which I believe is the best practice (I think user agent sniffing is discouraged) then this won't be an issue.
