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O2 X1 as modem - Breaching contract??

I have recently discovered how to use my phone as a modem on my laptop, and use the dataplan. I have unlimited data usage. the question i'm asking is: would they do anything when they find out there's a lot of data being used on my behalf. Also i've looked through O2's t&c's and all it says is fair usage, no actual figure of how much data per month you are allowed. could someone just give me some insightful info.
Thanks,
Joel
Also would using a bluetooth connection maybe make me less inconspicuous as there is a maximum data transfer rate of 56 kilo BYTES using bluetooth, where as O2 has a maximum HSDPA speed of 1.8 mega BITS (around 180 kilo BYTES per second). So maybe staying away from a cable would be slightly beneficial?

from their side it should just show that it's your phone which request and recieve all the data your laptop request thats the nature of using it as a router/modem

what do you mean?

Whoa!!
I used my phone with the Internet Sharing for a couple of days just to check my email and do a little browsing (While I was away in Cornwall).
And I got charged even though i've got unlimited data plan.
According to the O2 they can charge me if I use the phone as a tethered modem. As to how they know the difference between the phones browser and a laptop using it's connection I don't know

blink182_joel said:
what do you mean?
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He means they won't know a thing!
Basically, using laptop to access is the same as using the phone but plus convenient.

THJahar said:
Whoa!!
I used my phone with the Internet Sharing for a couple of days just to check my email and do a little browsing (While I was away in Cornwall).
And I got charged even though i've got unlimited data plan.
According to the O2 they can charge me if I use the phone as a tethered modem. As to how they know the difference between the phones browser and a laptop using it's connection I don't know
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May be you could try changing UserAgent on you browser to match opera and see if that works.

I've recieved a warning.. kind of
It reads
O2: Due to your daily data usage being extremely high following our previous warning
Thats it!
I've had no other warnings to my knowledge.
I called to enquire what the meaning of the above message. The call centre op said it was to do with my data usage and Asked me if i was using my phone as a modem
I've been with o2 for many years, and have used my phone as a modem for the entire time
I don't fully believe they can tell what you're doing with your phone, surely if they knew the call centre op would have pointed this out.
But I do believe i have put myself above the radar by DLing the latest episode of Heroes on Tuesday night!! (I was stopping in a hotel and I was bored!)

ha ha brilliant. so... has anyone measured their download speed if so what's the highest you've achieved? i'm intrigued...

I was told the "unlimited" plan was subject to a fair usage policy which was around 300mb a month or so, up to 400 would not be unreasonable the chap said... but I have not even got near that yet... yet...

The only way they can tell your phone is being used as a modem is as a result of the high usage. There is nothing to say that you cannt use your phone as a modem and the only restriction is the unlimited data plan bolt-on's fair usage policy. The policy isn't a set figure from what I have been told, it's a determined level of data allowance based upon your tariff, minutes and texts and your usage on the contract. What I'm not sure of id whether the fair usage figure goes up as you use more minutes and texts. However, I think it is raised by how much your tariff and average monthly spend is.
All I can suggest is not using a phone as a modem other than in an emergency, such as in a power cut....which there are barely any of in the UK.

I work for o2...The official line is your not supposed to do it.
Fair usage policy is 230 MB. It has been set at an amount that a phone alone would never use in a month.
Problem with laptops and PC's is they consume much larger quantities of data, when browsing. The biggest culprit is Auto Windows Update, you can be unaware that this can run in the background downlaoding updates for programs.
If Microsoft releases a service pack for windows or office, that can easily be more than your whole monthly allowance in a matter of minutes.
Theoretically they can charge you £3 for every MB you go over...thus a windows service pack could cost you up £200 to £300.
In the UK they dont often do this, they send polite text messages instead. However do this abroad and they will charge you every time.
Dont worry I wont tell

berrrtie said:
But I do believe i have put myself above the radar by DLing the latest episode of Heroes on Tuesday night!! (I was stopping in a hotel and I was bored!)
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YOU MUPPET!
Seriously, torrents are huge hogs of bandwidth so it's no wonder that O2 latched onto you. 350MB seeded back to 1:1 is 700MB total. Even if you got it from newsgroups it would still kill your bandwidth allocation. I know it's not what you want to hear but READ your terms and conditions in future! It's made quite plain that you're not to use the phone tethered to a laptop.
I've been using my mobile internet quite heavily and my account panel says I'm hardly using anything (maybe 5MB per day if I'm lucky). 230MB/month sounds like a reasonable level and thank you for confirming it Mark. Everyone knew it was *around* 200MB but no-one seemed to know exactly how much.

Mark A Cilenti said:
I work for o2...The official line is your not supposed to do it.
Fair usage policy is 230 MB. It has been set at an amount that a phone alone would never use in a month.
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I would think that with todays phones (especially like the x1) they would up this... eg if I use Edge or HSDPA and I would like to download some of the RSS feeds i have and some of them have podcasts (Chinese for language learning) then I can use that allowance in a very very short time... all with just my phone... is the allowance a hang over from the wap type of phones...??

BBC had to stop iplayer going out over GPRS because of download quanitities.
o2 have another data bolt on called Web Max, and its £30 and I think the domestic UK limit on it is around 3GB, it was the for-runner to USB Mobile Broadband.

Data Bolt On Terms
* A maximum of one Data Bolt On can be added at any one time.
* The Web Bolt On allows you unlimited use of Telefónica O2 UK Limited's Edge/GPRS/ 3G networks (as applicable to your handset), for personal internet use via your mobile phone. All usage must be for your private, personal and non-commercial purposes. You may not use your SIM Card:
o in, or connected to, any other device including modems;
o to allow the continuous streaming of any audio / video content, enable Voice over Internet (Voip), P2P or file sharing; or
o in such a way that adversely impacts the service to other O2 customers.
Source : o2.co.uk

I am on the web bolt-on and I have used VoIP and streaming of video and music over the HSDPA network of O2 and I have not seen them charging me in my monthly bill.
I guess they have a way to detect if the device is being used as a modem but the question is how?! Perhaps the only curlprit here is the excessive usage that flagged it up on the system but the same usage could be done using the X1i with a torrent client on the actual device, no?

No such thing has unlimited...

altho o2 still states unlimited, 200mb has also been mentioned on the website..
I guess it just depends how lucky your are..

mkouk said:
I am on the web bolt-on and I have used VoIP and streaming of video and music over the HSDPA network of O2 and I have not seen them charging me in my monthly bill.
I guess they have a way to detect if the device is being used as a modem but the question is how?! Perhaps the only curlprit here is the excessive usage that flagged it up on the system but the same usage could be done using the X1i with a torrent client on the actual device, no?
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Whilst the easiest way will be useage, they can also spot which ports you are using, so stuff like BitTorrent should be detectable.

on o2 uk it says you must not connect it to a laptop

Log data usage?

Is there a way to observe the data usage on the phone? I am on a data plan with 0.5GB usage cap, and I want to know when I am reaching it.

search the android market place for 'netcounter'

Monitor roaming data usage ?

Hi,
I did a search for monitoring data usage, and came up with all sorts of things. I'm sure someone is using something good for tp2, can someone give me some suggestion on apps that monitors my roaming data usage?
Thank!!

Constant data traffic

Hi.
I have a problem with my X10. I don't know if is android related or only applies to X10.
I posted in another section but i didn't get any answers so, it might be only X10.
Here it is.
A few days ago i installed a network monitor from market and reset the counters to 0 at midnight.
In the morning i had 12Mb traffic.
After, i disabled google sync, facebook and twitter updates, removed the weather widget from screen and i still had constant traffic.
2h ago i did a factory defaults and i only installed NetSentry and a task killer.
I don't have sync configured, no weather, no twitter, etc.
I killed all the apps excepting net sentry (including the task killer), set the counters to 0 and in 15min i have 130k traffic.
I don't have a data plan so, i'm only using wifi.
Can somebody with an X10 to monitor their traffic with net sentry (or other net monitor app)?
But, somebody with 3G or WIFI active all the time (WIFI sleep policy set to Never).
I'm curious if is something with my phone or ...

hey dude, i have the same thing happening here. i think its andriod not the phone. but i do agree with with you, some kind of time-out for the phone to disconnect if its sleeping is necessary not only to conserve battery but for those with limited data plan.

proatiku said:
hey dude, i have the same thing happening here. i think its andriod not the phone. but i do agree with with you, some kind of time-out for the phone to disconnect if its sleeping is necessary not only to conserve battery but for those with limited data plan.
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Well, if you are in WIFI area 22h/day you don't need a data plan but you need data active to receive mails, updates, etc so, my WIFI is always active.
I know is not the phone... what i want to figure out if is the Rogers branded firmware which has a problem or is something general and all X10 (or even all androids) are doing the same traffic.
Here in Canada, Rogers has stupid data plans.
25$ for 500Mb, 30$ for 1Gb, 60$ for 3Gb and 80$ for 5Gb.
If my phone is doing 0.5Mb in 1h without any apps running, those plans are a rip off
This means ~350Mb per month without any emails, browsing, etc gone on absolutely nothing.

tuxStyle said:
I don't have a data plan so, i'm only using wifi.
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Cool... I've a 3G data plan so I don't really care for data traffic (I will however do the test and share results), but having 3G attached consumes very quickly the battery (100% at 8:00 AM, 20% at 8:00 PM, with push e-mail on both Moxier and GMail). How long lasts the battery with WiFi always connected?

lornova said:
Cool... I've a 3G data plan so I don't really care for data traffic (I will however do the test and share results), but having 3G attached consumes very quickly the battery (100% at 8:00 AM, 20% at 8:00 PM, with push e-mail on both Moxier and GMail). How long lasts the battery with WiFi always connected?
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wow i must say your battery is amazing. what Firmware are you running? my battery consumption is about 50% for only 5hours.
am on unlimited Data and 3G always connected. its driving me crazy.

proatiku said:
wow i must say your battery is amazing. what Firmware are you running? my battery consumption is about 50% for only 5hours.
am on unlimited Data and 3G always connected. its driving me crazy.
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I'm running the stock firmware and actually I don't find the battery so amazing: consuming 80% of charge in half a day is very bad. And this is achieved by disabling Bluetooth (with my previous Xperia X1 I was used to let BT always turned on) and minimal usage. If I surf a bit, or talk few minutes, I will run out of battery, and this is not acceptable...

Please, this is not about battery or power management, we have another thread for that.
So, nobody wants to do the test for 30min to see if they have traffic when background sync is disabled and all the other apps killed?

tuxStyle said:
Please, this is not about battery or power management, we have another thread for that.
So, nobody wants to do the test for 30min to see if they have traffic when background sync is disabled and all the other apps killed?
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It wasn't my intention to go off topic, I just asked you how long lasts your battery with WiFi always connected.
I plan to do the 30 minute test this week end. Which application are you using to count the transferred data?

lornova said:
It wasn't my intention to go off topic, I just asked you how long lasts your battery with WiFi always connected.
I plan to do the 30 minute test this week end. Which application are you using to count the transferred data?
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Well, never more than 12h but i listen music via Bluetooth a few hours and i play a lot with the phone (heh, new toy)
I bought UltimateJuice ... i hope i'll see an improvement.

Nobody else has problems with data?
Or, everyone has unlimited data plans?

the constant data access appears to be a function of Android. i immediately noticed that when i entered my network settings.
the perfect solution i found was to install an app called APNdroid, which you can get for free at the Android market. this allows you to toggle your network data connection on and off and gives you total control over your data consumption.

Well, the idea is: i need my data on most of the time.
But, i don't want unwanted data
And it seems nobody knows which app or service is doing this traffic.
And more than that, it seems that nobody cares

Try to use 3d watchdog to monitor traffic. Best straightforward application
Link
And Install APN Droid and switch on/off 3G when ever you want.
Link
even further you can install profile package to automatically activate wifi or 3g on certain time or location.

@Shiwanta, thank's for the tip of 3G Watchdog ! Will try it soon.

Try to use 3d watchdog to monitor traffic. Best straightforward application
Link
And Install APN Droid and switch on/off 3G when ever you want.
Link
even further you can install profile package to automatically activate wifi or 3g on certain time or location.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know about 3g watchdog and apn droid but i don't want my data disabled. i still need sync and email updates.
ibought ultimate juice. let's hoe it helps.
Sent from my X10a using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk

[Q] Data Usage per month

Hi Guys,
I am wondering what kinda data usage you can expect from the DZ per month. I plan to use it for occasional web browsing, weaher updates, email and calendar sync.
I would like to download and use different apps - but concerned do a normal app always need to be connected to the internet for it to run or does it run locally and only connects if it needs to download any data?
Any thoughts will be very helpful.
Thanks.

Audette said:
I would like to download and use different apps - but concerned do a normal app always need to be connected to the internet for it to run or does it run locally and only connects if it needs to download any data?
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Apps will only access the Internet if/when they need to. So for a standalone app, that might be never.
So no, normally apps don't need to be connected to the Internet, unless that's part of their function (e.g. an online banking app that only works via the Internet to access your bank's servers etc).

Maybe I'm a little offtopic: is there any app that will show daily and monthly data usage for each application, but only data from the mobile network (no WiFi/USB)? It would be useful to know how much each app is using. With WM, I had SPB Wireless Monitor for that - so something similar would be perfect.

Audette: it's always better to get a data plan for a smartphone. Mostly much cheaper then pay-as-you-used.
darthmelk: try Check out "3G Watchdog" in the market.

I use 3G Watchdog, but it doesn't show data usage for each application (or I don't know how to display that?). That's the only thing it's missing.

There is one app that showed individual data usage, however this app itself was a massive drain on the phones CPU and battery so I would not advice using it.
In any event I forgot what it was called
I use about 500mb a month mobile data, but I use wifi whenever I can.

Try TrafficInfo or TrafficStats. They do show per application usage (sent/recieved). I just installed them yesterday and the TrafficInfo seems a bit nicer to me.
I am looking for an application that could show which application is currently downloading/uploading real time, something like netlimiter on the PC.

At traffic stats is what I was on about, watch out with these apps, by their very nature they will be a big drain on resources (and therefore battery life).

I had a quick try of Traffic Info. Maybe I was missing something, but this just seems to show Internet usage per application.
The problem is, it doesn't seem to distinguish between Internet usage via my phone carrier connection (which I'm more concerned about) and Internet usage via wireless (which I'm not concerned about).
Can anyone recommend an app which splits the two ? I would have thought that if something access the information at the correct level then it could differentiate.

I am using Network traffic counter (NetCounter) and quite satisfied. It does not track usage per application (and I don't really care...), but fully separate cell & wifi.
So far reached 735 MB on cell and 3 GB on wifi since got the phone on 9th November.

adrungil said:
I am using Network traffic counter (NetCounter) and quite satisfied. It does not track usage per application (and I don't really care...), but fully separate cell & wifi.
So far reached 735 MB on cell and 3 GB on wifi since got the phone on 9th November.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, that sounds like what I'm after, I'll give it a try.