AT&T aims to cease unauthorized tethering, says “Stop or pay”

We've got some bad news for the iPhone users that found a way around the AT&T no-tethering-without-a-plan policy with a jailbreak. Apparently the carrier has detected the violators of its policy and is now sending push notifications, asking them to stop it or sign up for their $45 tethering plan.

What's even worse the company says it will automatically upgrade the data plans to that for users who do not cease with the jailbroken tethering. Now we are no lawyers and the company has probably included a clause in the common terms of each contact that allows it to do so, but seriously - changing someone's contract without their consent doesn't sound terribly nice.

Also it's still unclear how exactly the carrier identifies the users that tether their iPhones.

Now we understand the AT&T position here and yet we find telling people what they can and what they can't do with their data plans (or smartphones, for that matter) pretty absurd. On the other hand, such moves are probably required to maintain those impressively low subsidized prices.

Still we can't help but wonder if the few extra bucks that AT&T is going to make this way are worth the negative publicity that this move is inevitably going to attract?

Your thoughts?

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