[Captivate General] bames:
You obviously have limited understanding of the issue.

1. Most of the people i know who tether their phone do it very sporadically and use under 2GB per month (even if they have unlimited data). For instance, i generally only tether if their is a storm that knocks out my cable service and want to check email/news on full size screen). Despite having an unlimited plan and have yet to exceed 2gb. I would tether maybe 4-6 times per 12 months.

2. There are as many or more "data hogs" burning up data untethered. People are using their phones for constant streaming of audio and video (pandora, hulu, youtube, am/fm radio, remote streaming content from their pc's). Additionally, many people are using their phones to download/upload large files. Believe it or not a big part of the problem are torrents. People are using their smartphones and the data connection as on the go portable torrent uploader/downloaders.

3. ATT shares a large part of the blame in their marketing scheme by marketing "phones that do everything" and offering unlimited data plans (and their failure to realize the not everyone was going to overpay for/under-utilize their data plan). Additionally when i first got a data plan it was when all they had was edge service and they were doing hardsell on unlimited plans in both sales tactics as well as ridiculous overage charges (todays $10 per gb of overage is extremely reasonable compared to how they use to charge overages..at the time they were charging so many odd cents per KILOBYTE of overage). When you went on to get a plan the pitch involved them describing the limited plan and then telling you it was like russian roulette and that they really needed the unlimited plan (and usually a few anecdotes about customers with capped plans who ended up with $500 or even $1000+ dollars worth of data overage charges). They tried to charge me in the upper $300 dollars for data overage when i originally cancelled my edge plan. It was their mistake and they fixed it (they back dated my cancellation to previous billing period and backbilled the data i had used under the edge plan).

If data truly is so scarce and the network is so overburdened then why encourage people to use more data by encouraging the purchase of a tethering plan that comes with an additional 2GB of data? Oh wait...they don't expect people to use that extra 2gb of data because they know most users don't use 2gb tethered or untethered in the first place so its all a shell game to make you feel like you are getting a great deal. When money is getting tighter for people it doesn't make sense to try to nickel and dime or bilk your customers. f people can tether and stay under their data plan why make them pay extra? If someone wants to tether and use 4gb then with the overages they would pay the same amount as the tether plan...but if someone wants to use 2 or 3gb let them pay for what you use.....data is the commodity not the native function and ability of the device and OS to tether...CHARGE FOR THE DATA. NO BRAINER. Whatever carrier figures this out first and properly markets it should have a good head start and upperhand in the smartphone war.

This isn't as clear cut and easy as you make it sound and not a probability. Not cost efficient or effective to to on a widespread basis. If you are using large quantities of data they may flag you and take a closer look but i don't subscribe to the notion that all or most tethers are data hogs so most tethers will have ZERO worries.

One last thought....we have all seen people in forums scrounging for ways to get out of their contact without an early termination fee (usually when they get mad at their carrier or another carrier has the next greatest phone launch). Why this is important to the discussion is because if ATT were to automatically add tethering to their plan they have changed the contract and you have 30 days to cancel your contract WITHOUT ANY ETF. It wouldn't make sense for them to target responsible tethers and take the risk of alienating their loyalty and business while at the same time giving them a free early out to cancel service and sign on with another carrier.