Yeah, just came back to post that it needs the mifi to work. Not sure if I like this one...
And why wouldn't you charge for the hotspot? When you have as many customers as verizon you can't afford to have one phone supporting multiple people at no extra charge. From a single user its no big deal... but 1 million could become 5 million at no extra charge and bog down the network. Its not the bandwith as much as it is people would be online more due to it being free. Having more people online and adding in the people sharing would result in a situation like ATT had in NY. They could make everything free like people want but it is a business. Maybe in a few years with LTE but definitely not now.