Hi! New here to the community and to Pepwave. We just got a SOHO on a recommendation that I would be able to use our T-Mobile iphone 5 with the unlimited (up to 50gb “unlimited”) hotspot. The iphone can have up to 5 users but the SOHO can have so many more. Also I was told that if the SOHO is used that T-Mobile it wouldn’t be able to tell where the ip address is coming from so it wouldn’t be able to throttle it after the 50GB. But here is what’s happening:
The Iphone 5 hot spot works well if connected to it even after the 50gb was used. (T-Mobile says it only throttles after 50GB and it gives preference to the customers that aren’t over their bandwith/data limit otherwise if others don’t need the bandwidth it doesn’t throttle it. And that seems to be accurate as it will slow at peak times when we are over the 50GB.) but the SOHO is being throttled all the time! It doesn’t matter if we used 5gb or 100gb on the hotspot. It is still being slowed. And I proved it by switching back and forth between the iphone and the SOHO. The iphone works well but he SOHO is slow. When we first connected the iphone to the SOHO it worked well and there wasn’t much difference in the speeds between the iphone and the SOHO. Can T-Mobile throttle the SOHO? I had heard that they can because they want you to use the hot spot as your connection and if you need more connections to buy another phone and hotspot? Is that accurate? We bought the SOHO so we could have more connections and not have to get another hotspot?
Hi there!
This is actually not a Pepwave issue, but simply how the T-Mobile Unlimited proposition works.
You’re violating the terms of service/fair use policy when you tether the iPhone to the SOHO.
Even though they sell it as ‘Unlimited’, it’s not REALLY unlimited, since certain rules and restrictions still apply.
I’m pretty sure T-Mobile is able to see that you’re doing this, so they proceed to throttle the speeds.
If I remember correctly, I read somewhere on a Dutch T-Mobile forum that they can see out of the ordinary ‘hops’ in the SIM-card’s data connection.
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Thank you that’s what I thought. I guess we should be grateful that we are not getting throttled that bad on the iphone. Also I should say that the phone is tethered wireless as it would not tether with USB? I can’t even tether it USB straight to my laptop? Doesn’t recognize it as a hotspot? I know that’s off topic and should be for a T-Mobile forum
That could be an USB modem compatibility issue between the SOHO and the iPhone 5.
I’ve never tested this, so I can’t confirm.
I can’t help you with the laptop unfortunately, in my experience it should be plug and play in most cases.
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Hello @Mnfish22 & @Joey_van_der_Gaag,
Peplink/Pepwave products do not currently support tethering by USB of iOS devices, there is a feature request found here, feel welcome to add your vote if you like.
In regards to Windows not tethering with iOS devices, ensure you have the latest version of iTunes installed, it has the drivers required that may fix your PC tethering USB issues. We use iPhones (both our own and clients) a lot for support in Australia and not having iTunes up-to-date is one of the first things we often need to get sorted with doing support tethered via USB to an iOS device.
Happy to Help,
Marcus 
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Would also love to see this.
