Suspicious of tethering, AT&T threatens to kill man’s unlimited data plan

Longtime AT&T customer Evan Shapiro still has one of the carrier's old unlimited data plans, but AT&T seemingly doesn’t want him to keep it. Shapiro received a letter from AT&T in Sept telling him that he needs to either stop tethering or move to a limited data plan that allows him to tether. (Tethering shares a phone’s Internet connection with another device, such as a laptop.) One problem: Shapiro says he’s never tethered. He has evidence of a screenshot from his phone which shows that he can’t use the device's built-in tethering functionality unless he contacts AT&T to enable the feature.

Shapiro suspects that AT&T is trying to move people off the old unlimited data plans, which he has been grandfathered into since AT&T stopped selling them to new customers in 2010. The first AT&T employee he spoke to tried to convince him to buy a 5GB plan, he said. Shapiro said he pays $30 a month for the unlimited data, though his full bill is around $100 including texting and voice with international calling. Shapiro said he rarely uses more than 5GB a month, but the tethering accusations have “really turned me off in terms of being a customer and I'm thinking about switching to another carrier.”