We have received dozens of e-mails from readers trying to add Verizon Wireless’ coveted 4G $30 unlimited-use Mobile Hotspot feature to their accounts, with varying results.  We’ve compiled, with the help of our readers, a guide to assist you in scoring the only good thing to come from Verizon’s recent changes in data pricing.  If you follow these steps, you should be good to go.

Q&A

1. What is a Mobile Hotspot and What Is Verizon offering? — Verizon Wireless offers customers a service to turn their 3G or 4G phones into a Wi-Fi provider, letting you connect your other portable devices, like a tablet or laptop, to your Verizon Wireless data connection to access the Internet over Wi-Fi.  Technically, this feature is built-in to most smartphones, but cell phone companies monetize it by charging you an extra monthly fee to use the service.  Traditionally, Verizon charges $20 extra a month (on top of your data plan) to enable this feature, and has limited it to 2GB of use per month.  Each additional gigabyte will cost you $10.  But when Verizon introduced its new 4G LTE network, early adopters to 4G phones got access to this feature for free, for a limited time.  On 7/7, Verizon’s new limited-use data plans took effect, and Verizon expired the free 4G Mobile Hotspot feature.  To placate 4G owners, it offered them the chance to continue getting unlimited use of this feature, for an extra $30 a month.

That’s a stiff price to pay on top of your monthly data plan, but because Verizon’s LTE network is currently fast enough to serve as a home broadband backup (we consistently get speeds of 11/3Mbps on LTE from our headquarters), $60 total for unlimited wireless Internet isn’t completely outrageous at those speeds.  Yes, it’s ridiculous Verizon disabled a feature built in and functional on phones in other countries, but it is the same story with other carriers as well.  We even agree with the proposition you should be able to use your unlimited data plan for anything you want, but that’s just not a reality at the moment.

2. Who exactly qualifies for the $30 unlimited Mobile Hotspot? — We have been able to confirm for sure that anyone who activated or at least ordered a 4G phone before midnight on 7/7 is qualified to upgrade to this plan.  You cannot, however, activate the plan on a 3G phone.  Only 4G models qualify.  Where things get murky is whether or not customers who currently have 3G phones can still upgrade to a 4G model after 7/7 and get this plan.  Droid Life believes the answer to this question may be “yes” based on two tweets sent from Verizon Support:

We are more skeptical, however, based on the accumulated responses we’ve collected from Verizon Wireless from our readers, which admittedly are all over the map.  Verizon reps have not been offering consistent information about the Mobile Hotspot plan since it was first announced more than a week ago.  The company is preoccupied with reassuring existing customers they were not at risk of imminently losing their unlimited data plans, an entirely different subject.

I would not upgrade to a 4G phone today in hopes of scoring this Mobile Hotspot plan unless you have the name of an employee you can use if you complete the order, try to activate the feature, and encounter resistance.  In truth, Verizon can do anything they want for any customer, new or otherwise.  The trick is finding an employee with the authority to make things happen.  Be prepared to escalate or call back if you encounter a roadblock.

3. What happens if I have a 4G phone and start a Hotspot session with a 3G signal, is it still unlimited? — Yes.  Any Mobile Hotspot session originated on this plan on a 4G phone is unlimited regardless of what network conditions you encounter, as long as you are on Verizon’s network.

4. Does this apply to mobile broadband, provided by a dongle or a MiFi device?  — No.  Only 4G smartphones qualify for this plan.

5. How many people can share my Mobile Hotspot connection at the same time? — Verizon traditionally says five, but my phone (Samsung Charge) supports up to 10 concurrent Hotspot connections.  That’s a lot, so if everyone piles on, expect some slowdowns from the shared connection.

6. Can you add and drop the featured plan and get it back later? — Verizon has not said.  The company has not responded to questions about the longevity of this plan, whether it could be withdrawn, or whether customers can add and drop it (and add it back) at will.  We see that as evidence this is a promotional add-on that is likely to be withdrawn for new customers at some point in the future.  Verizon traditionally grandfathers customers already on a plan indefinitely, which means if you have it, you can keep it.  If this feature is important to you, we recommend you add it and keep it active.  When it’s gone for new sign-ups, it’s gone.

7. I do not see the plan under Verizon’s My Services on their website.  Should I be concerned? — No.  The plan was being offered to customers initiating new Mobile Hotspot sessions on their 4G phones, but not to all.  We never found it on Verizon’s website.  The only indication it is active on your account is finding this: “4G SMARTPHONE HOTSPOT” listed on this page (to access, you must first login to your Verizon Wireless account and select the line on which the feature was ordered.)

Ordering Advice

We have found multiple methods of securing this plan, and with the thanks of Stop the Cap! reader DJ, we have even located the all-important plan number, which you can reference when contacting Verizon.  If you run into a roadblock calling Verizon customer service, or can’t get the plan added while visiting a Verizon Wireless corporate store, we have some other suggestions.

1. Customers who already had a 4G phone before 7/7 can call Verizon Wireless from your phone at 611 or 1-800-922-0204 Monday-Sunday 6am-11pm ET.  Tell them you wish to add plan code #76153 — $30 Unlimited 4G Mobile Hotspot.

2. If you activated a new 4G phone after 7/7, call VZW’s Orders & Activations Hotline at 1-877-807-4646.  Work through the prompts.  You may be prompted to accept a customer agreement and get “trapped” in a menu asking you to press “1” or “2” after accepting the customer agreement.  Press “0” and wait to be transferred to a live agent.  Tell them you wish to add plan code #76153 — $30 Unlimited 4G Mobile Hotspot.

3. If rebuffed by either, try calling 1-316-681-9940, the number to a Verizon store in Kansas that has employees active in several phone forums helping people trying to get on this plan.  They should be able to add the plan to any 4G phone account, whether you are in Kansas or not.  Again, reference plan code #76153 — $30 Unlimited 4G Mobile Hotspot.

Let us know if you still have any problems in our comments section!

Pentefountas

Stop the Cap! is following this week’s extensive hearings into Internet Overcharging in Canada by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).  The debate into Bell’s attempt to mandate usage-based billing for -every- provider in Canada, regardless of whether they are owned or operated by Bell, reached a new level of absurdity this morning when a Conservative appointee to the CRTC, Tom Pentefountas — the vice-chairman of the commission — asked this question to an astonished panel headed by Openmedia.ca, a consumer group fighting usage-based billing:

“What is so undemocratic about allowing a few companies to control the Internet?”

Pentefountas was openly hostile at times against Openmedia, questioning their membership, their funding, and whether they had a “self-interest” in the fight.  They do — consumers, a concept that evidently escapes the very Big Telecom-friendly new commissioner, appointed by the government of Stephen Harper.

Yesterday, much of the hearing was focused on Bell’s defense of UBB, and we noted Mirko Bibic’s increasing discomfort as the Bell lobbyist came under increasing scrutiny and hard questioning that he never experienced during earlier hearings (those that led to the CRTC’s approval of UBB).  Now that the public (and higher government officials) are watching and listening, what used to be a non-confrontational experience is today sounding increasingly skeptical of the arguments for UBB by many commissioners.

We’ll have audio archives of the hearings available here when they are published online.  They help build the record of carrier arguments for UBB, independent findings which call out those arguments, and the opposition to UBB and why flat rate broadband is important to the knowledge-based economy of North America.

There will be hurdles to overcome, starting with confronting the attitudes of commissioners like Mr. Pentefountas, who evidently does not understand the implications of a few corporate entities controlling Canada’s Internet.

Follow live coverage of the CRTC hearings here.

The state of California is in receipt of a letter from AT&T objecting to a state workshop on the AT&T/T-Mobile merger that included 70 minutes for a panel of academic experts to share their views of one of the state’s largest wireless mergers in years.

J. David Tate, AT&T’s general attorney and associate general counsel, sent the letter in response to news California regulators would open the workshop to a presentation from academics about the impact the merger would have on California consumers, ranging from competition to roaming access to spectrum issues.

Tate called that inappropriate and asked the California Public Utilities Commission to ban their testimony:

“AT&T is raising objections to the panel because having a panel of ‘academic experts’ present at this workshop will pose significant risk of tainting the record with potentially uninformed and biased opinions. These opinions do not constitute the facts upon which the transaction should be reviewed.

“[…] Allowing academicians with unknown expertise in the wireless telecom industry the opportunity to place on the record their personal opinions regarding AT&T’s planned purchase of T-Mobile USA is procedurally improper, unfairly prejudicial to the parties, and contrary to due process principles.”

Instead of allowing those outside of the industry to present their views on the merger, AT&T suggested the best solution would be to allot the 70 minutes originally given to the academics to AT&T (and the three remaining panels AT&T does not object to) instead.

The impact of the last minute stampede by Verizon Wireless customers (new or otherwise) to lock in the company’s unlimited data plans before they were retired last week has reached Wall Street, but the ripples extend far beyond Verizon Wireless itself.

Macquarie USA analyst Kevin Smithen this morning downgraded AT&T stock to “neutral,” expressing concern about AT&T’s slowed growth in wireless revenues.

“We see increased headwinds to wireless revenue growth, limited improvement in enterprise and a lack of clarity on the status of the [pending acquisition of T-Mobile],” he writes. “We view projected organic revenue growth of 0.5% in 2012 as uninspiring. At current levels, we believe absolute and relative risk-reward to roughly balanced given these issues.”

Customers concerned about Internet Overcharging schemes being implemented by Verizon Wireless began fleeing other providers to “lock in” unlimited data service with Verizon before it was nigh.  One big victim of that was AT&T.

“We were waiting for the next iPhone to finally jump to Verizon, even if it meant paying a termination fee to AT&T, just to escape the dreadful service,” says Shai Lee, who was among several dozen readers contacting Stop the Cap! for assistance securing unlimited data plans with Big Red.  “When Verizon announced $30 for 2GB, there was no way we were going to be locked into paying that, so we jumped early.”

Many followed.

Smithen believes customers are also fleeing other carriers, especially T-Mobile, which he believes will lose two million customers before AT&T closes the deal or faces ultimate rejection for its merger by Washington regulators.

Some analysts believe T-Mobile customers are leaving over a combination of the company’s inherent weakness as a provider-now-in-limbo while others dread the reality of being ultimately stuck with AT&T.

“It’s like fleeing a country before the invading army reaches your town,” shares Samuel, a T-Mobile customer leaving for Verizon. “I won’t live under AT&T’s regime.”

Smithen sees even greater challenges for AT&T with the arrival of iPhone 5, which will either cost the company to subsidize or start another wave of AT&T emigration.

Verizon has already managed to secure 32 percent of the U.S. iPhone 4 market, according to a study by the mobile analytics company Localytics.  Since rumors about Verizon imminently ending unlimited data plans began in May of this year, Localytics has tracked a spike in Verizon iPhone purchases, one explained by existing customers upgrading to smartphones, and new customers arriving from other carriers.

For AT&T, customers on contract with smartphones are not adding additional services and those with data plans are trying to stay within plan limits, robbing AT&T of extra revenue.

Smithen says with this track record, average revenue per customer is “stalling.”

Dish Networks' ViP722: Leaving on a 60-watt bulb 24 hours a day uses just a tad more than the ludicrous power consumption of this set top box: 55W while active and 52W while in standby.

The average pay television subscriber is spending at least $4 a month in hidden electricity costs thanks to the small set top boxes found on top of many television sets across North America.  That’s more than you are paying to run a modern refrigerator.

That stunning revelation comes from a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, financed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Costs for residents in the northeastern United States, where electricity rates are often higher, can reach $10 per month for customers with a DVR in the living room and a traditional set top box in the bedroom.  That’s up to $120 a year in hidden charges.

The pay television industry, which has driven the set top box into millions of homes, has never paid much attention to energy consumption of their equipment, if only because they don’t pay the power bills of their customers.  The NRDC found that many boxes even attempt to fool consumers into believing they are running in a reduced-power mode, by programming them to slightly dim the front clock when the box’s “power button” is switched off.

In reality, most set top boxes use nearly as much power “shut off” as they use left on.

The cost of these little power demons to North America’s power grid exceeds 18 billion kilowatt hours. More than seven power plants could not sustain that level of power, even if running 24/7 every day of the year.  The combined electric use of Alberta and British Columbia in a year would still not match the power consumption of every set top box in North America.

These revelations have led the U.S. Department of Energy to lay the groundwork to regulate the power consumption of set top equipment.  Once again, the United States would be a follower.  Europe cracked down on excessive power consumption of electronic equipment years earlier.  In the United Kingdom, for example, satellite providers include a box that can achieve a standby status that only consumes a handful of watts.  The trade-off is that consumers have to wait up to 90 seconds for the box to re-boot every morning when the television is first switched on.  Consumers have the ability to choose different power states as a menu option on the devices.

Some cable operators program their DVR boxes to spin down internal hard drives overnight, assuming no recording is scheduled at those times.  But many of these initiatives were designed to spare the longevity of the hard drive, not reduce power consumption overall.

Popular Science dug through the data and uncovered the best reasonable options subscribers have for boxes that at least snort their way onto your monthly utility bill, as opposed to pigging out at the trough (your wallet):

If You Have Comcast

In terms of energy efficiency, Comcast comes out as the lesser of several evils, but not by much. Comcast’s most energy-efficient boxes tend to be slightly more efficient than their equivalents at Verizon, Time Warner, and the satellite companies, and they also offer more choices in terms of hardware. The NRDC’s data picks the Motorola DCH70 as the best standard-def box (sucking down 10W while active, and 10W while on standby), the Pace RNG110 as the best high-def box (13W active, 12W standby), and the Motorola DCX3400 as the best HD/DVR (29W active, 28W standby).

I spoke to a Comcast representative who told me that typically, the company installs whichever box they want, but that if you request a specific box that they have in stock, they’ll happily install that one for you. They won’t order you a box from elsewhere, and this kind of hardware rotates in and out of availability fairly quickly, but at least you might have the option to choose.

If You Have Verizon FiOS

Verizon’s most efficient boxes are just okay, while its least efficient are some of the worst of any surveyed. Even worse, Verizon gives the customer absolutely no option about which box they get–you can’t request a specific box at any point. That doesn’t matter too much for the non-DVR boxes, as the NRDC’s findings only turned up one standard-def and one high-def box, but there’s a big gap in efficiency between the company’s best and worst DVRs. The most efficient is Motorola’s QIP7216, at an unremarkably 29W active and 28W standby, but the older Motorola QIP6416 clocks in at a lousy 36W active and 35W standby.

If You Have Time Warner Cable

Time Warner has a smaller selection of set-top boxes than either Verizon or Comcast, with only one averagely (in)efficient DVR and one startlingly inefficient standard-def box. For a high-def, non-DVR box, the Cisco Explorer 4250HDC is the most efficient, at 19W active and 18W standby, but Time Warner told me that that’s an older box that might be tough to find. The Time Warner rep was (surprisingly, given the company’s lousy reputation here in New York) quite helpful, and offered to try to track down one of the 4250HDCs if that was what I wanted.

If You Have DirecTV

Here we get to the satellite folks. DirecTV’s offerings are only slightly less efficient than Comcast’s or Verizon’s, with the (currently only) standard-def box coming in at 12W active, 9W standby, the best HD box (the DirecTV H24) at 16W active, 15W standby, and the best HD/DVR (the DirecTV HR24) at 31W active, 31W standby. The DVR is pretty lousy, efficiency-wise, but that’s nothing compared to the Dish Network’s craziness.

If You Have Dish Network

I don’t know what is happening inside the Dish Network’s DVRs. Given the energy usage, they might well be powering nuclear reactors. The “best” DVR Dish offers, the ViP922, uses 43W while active, and 40W while in standby–but the worst one, the ViP722, uses a ridiculous 55W while active and 52W while in standby.

If You Use Internet Video Streaming

Many are ditching traditional cable services for online services like Netflix and Hulu, and luckily, there are a whole bunch of gadgets that can play that content (and more) on a TV. They are also invariably more efficient than a cable box, to a startling degree. The Apple TV (reviewed here), which streams Netflix and plays music, movies, and TV from Apple’s iTunes store, uses a mere 3W while active and 0.5W while in standby. Roku‘s XR-HD, which streams Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video, and a whole bunch more, uses only 7W while active and another 7W while in standby. The Boxee Box, a curiously shaped media streamer that uses the open-source, ultra-powerful Boxee software, can play Netflix, stream video from other computers on its network, play media from a hard drive or thumb drive plugged into one of its USB ports, and stream from lots of apps (with Hulu hopefully to come soon). It was tested by an Ars Technica commenter whose measurements probably differ from the NRDC’s, but roughly estimates that it uses 13W while active and 13W while in standby.

[flv width=”640″ height=”388″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CBC TV boxes guzzle power 6-27-11.flv[/flv]

CBC TV took a closer look at the pay television set top box: a real power guzzler.  (2 minutes)