Sprint Confirms Tethering Data Cap Coming October 2nd

Well, we all knew it had to come to an end at some point. With the other major U.S. carriers doing away with truly unlimited data months ago, Sprint was attempting to hold out and use that as a competitive advantage. But evidently, even they are starting to cave. Sprint recently confirmed that they will soon introduced a data ceiling for their mobile hotspot add-on for smartphone users. Before, hotspot subscribers would be able to pay $29.99 monthly for unlimited tethering, be it 3G or 4G (depending on phone). But starting on October 2nd, that will be truly capped at 5GB. That's still a ton of data, and we can understand why they'd put a cap on things to prevent abuse, but it's still scary to think that this may be the first shoe to drop, and that all Sprint data plans will face a cap sooner rather than later.

A spokesperson for the carrier issued the following statement: "Sprint continues to offer unlimited data for phones in its Everything Data and Simply Everything plans. Mobile Hotspot data usage is calculated independent of a customer’s phone data usage. The mobile hotspot functionality on a phone enables other Wi-Fi enabled devices to connect to the Sprint network. Effective Oct. 2, Sprint is changing the optional $29.99 Mobile Hotspot add-on for phones. The new add-on has a monthly 5GB on-network data allowance for 3G or combined 3G/4G usage.


Oddly, there's no clarification on what will happen if you hit that 5GB cap, but we're guessing you'll either get a warning, be charged extra or have your account flipped off until the next billing cycle. Guess we'll find out -- October's not too far out.