I have had to tether my computer to my phone because my main internet is down and looks to not be coming back (it's a WISP and they are having interference on the 900MHz band from a new farmer who is keeping tabs on his cattle using the same band) and for the first 13 days of this month i have enjoyed 3-4Mbps download rates. never went over a gig though according to my tether app, and when i am offline i turn data OFF and just leave the cellular part on (no 3G/EDGE just the phone portion). then i went out for two days and left the phone on airplane mode. coming back, it's the 15th now, and guess what? i'm capped to 256Kbps again, although i have used NO data the last two days. is this a half-of-month shutdown? never heard of such a thing. last time i was tethered it was still going 3-4Mbps. this same phenomenon happened about the same time last month, and it was not tethered until the last two days...i found out by a speedtest app on my phone itself, and was only using EDGE for keeping widgets up to date.