[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Samutd45:
From my experience I have specifically found this to be untrue but I could certainly see how one would interpret it that way. There really is no one true answer to this question but I will say the higher tier tech confirmed on the phone with me that it was perfectly within my right to have 100 gb or more per month of unthrottled 4g lte use. They don't track whether you are tethering or not...can they? They certainly can especially if you use the my verizon app as they are able to see certain diagnostics and also they can see specifically which applications are running on your phone. The tech actually told me I was running an excessive amount of apps which was true at the time and she specifically told me which apps were running. This proves the point that they know I'm tethering without paying the $20 per month service charge, they are not charging me for it.

I think your misunderstanding is that you are incorrectly correlating tethering to throttling as these two things appear to be mutually exclusive. In other words verizon doesn't really treat you differently if you are on tiered vs non tiered as far as throttling goes.

Please read the following portion taken from the referenced article on android police, it's at the very bottom:

"Finally, we'll talk about tethering and Block C.

Much hoop-lah has been made of the following provision, as related to the legality of charging for wireless tethering on Verizon:

(c)(1)... The potential for excessive bandwidth demand alone shall not constitute grounds for denying, limiting or restricting access to the network. 47 CFR §27.16

The key issue is that this provision says nothing about limiting access on the basis of contractual obligations - it only applies when a carrier is limiting, restricting, or denying access to data services it has promised on the basis that a user is "congesting" the network. Verizon is still very much within its right to assert that it has the authority to prevent users from stealing access to a service it charges for, namely, tethering. Opponents say this is traffic discrimination and money-grabbing, Verizon says it's a perfectly legitimate usage-based access fee that it doesn't want users to circumvent.

There is absolutely nothing in the text of 27.16 suggesting carriers must provide unlimited data to users on networks operated on the 700MHz Block C frequencies. All (c)(1) is saying is that, once users have paid for a given service, carriers cannot discriminate against their traffic on the basis of bandwidth usage (eg, they can't throttle you) - but there's nothing to stop them from charging your more for using more. This is why Verizon's throttling only affects the top 5% of 3G, rather than 4G, users. I'm not sure if I explained that clearly, so I hope the distinction got across.

Of course, in matters involving regulatory authority, there's always going to be some wiggle room for discretion.

The FCC is unpredictable. There is no way to know if the agency will change its interpretation of its own rules, or if it will decide Verizon's particular actions aren't reasonable. This is all evaluated on a case by case basis. However, the agency's interpretation of reasonable network management in the past has tended to favor service providers in all but the most extreme cases (such as content-based throttling by Comcast), so it's hard for me to see them suddenly adopting a more demanding standard in regard to "reasonable network management.""