PDANET FTW. Average person uses 3g of data a month I used 29g last month.

Sprint does it to keep people from using their unlimited phone data plan as a replacement for their home internet.

I believe T-mobile charges too, but I don't pay it and they've never said anything or cut me off. But I rarely use it or take advantage of it. Almost always only at airports that don't offer free wi-fi...

I have the same phone. Yeah Sprint never intended for you to have that nice wifi feature for free when you bought the phone. Google/Samsung factory settings (not sure 2.3.5 maybe?) allowed that to work. Then an update rolled out that took away your free wifi. You pay the $10 for data access on your phone. It's always been $30 for hotspot usage. So you're really complaining about getting something you shouldn't have for free for x amount of months. Also before the update you were only able to use that wifi hotspot with 3g not 4g. Now if you pay you get 4g. But you just need to root your phone and get android wifi tether. It won't allow you to connect other mobile devices because it's an ad-hoc connection but works fine for pc's and works with 4g. Google's your friend. Put in some research and you'll be fine.

Or $35 a month for all. I do hate the service @ times but CS is top notch if a problem. (besides towers)

T-mobile doesn't charge for it.

i switched to sprint, tether with PDAnet, and average anywhere between 30-40 gb a month, and have never had sprint notify me that i am using too much data. So if one of the carriers truly has unlimited data, sprint is it.

I think the real key is to not try to grab a ton of torrents, watch movie after movie, etc. I've been riding my hotspot app hard for awhile now with Virgin and no complaints yet.