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Been doing this for years.

1. Plug HTC WM phone into charger outlet.
2. Activate WMWiFiRouter app to share out Sprint 3G over USB, wireless, or bluetooth.
3. ?????
4. Profit!

As a frustrated AT&T subscriber in NYC (I suppose that's a bit redundant) I would like to shock the government with some tests of America's fastest 3G network in midtown Manhattan during the day but this website with all that fancy javascript and registration stuff doesn't seem too friendly for this.

Currently I use dslreports but I'm not sure if AT&T somehow throttles or bursts or shapes data that appears to be speed tests nor do I know if the random data this site blasts out gets compressed through AT&T. The only speed test for my phone I know is reliable is by tethering through WMWifiRouter and downloading a Debian iso. Not very convenient and I'm just mesmerized that the likes of PCWorld actually claims that in NYC their testing of AT&T averaged >1500Kbps / >700kbps down/up when yesterday I got 16kbps and 32kbps with ridiculous latencies on the street in the 50s and 40s both around 1pm and then 6pm. I guess they're testing on Mondays at 2am.

Any other mobile friendly sites for testing would be appreciated along with any other at&t rants.

If you're an HTC WinMo man and you want to be able to tether uninterrupted with multiple laptops (uninterrupted by a call that is, incoming or out), to be able to do that together, just like Luke Wilson keeps whining about (Jesus I hate that guy), gotta have GSM 3G/WCDMA/HSDPA/UMTS/etc not CDMA. Your two options are TMo and AT&T for that.

Now if you want to be able to use data on your phone when you're in a department store or midtown Manhattan during business hours or Frisco, major metropolitan areas, and you want to minimize the risk of not having zero data as much as possible, Verizon. Go with Verizon and either tether or get a card thingy for your laptops. But I wouldn't have even mentioned AT&T if you didn't allude to tethering. It's worth adding that even without a tethering plan, I've tethered my ass off without ever having had a problem with AT&T stinging my ass with surcharges. Verizon's more anal, I believe.

If you're going in rural areas then, though you may still get EDGE with AT&T, firstly it's slow as balls data wise by design but with EDGE you won't get simultaneous voice and data. And data over EDGE, especially if you're tethering, man it's slow. So you might as well have Verizon then as its coverage, in case you haven't seen any of those ads, of "3G" speed over the States is much much better. So you're more likely to get reliable coverage with Verizon, but with AT&T, in the event of being within range of a 3G tower that just happens not to be congested and saturated, then you get to pop in your earpiece, go crazy tethering, the works. Again however, such events with AT&T are often intolerably rare.

Check your coverage maps obviously. Whichever way you swing it, for your tethering needs I strongly recommend wmwifirouter, no question.

Here may be a good place to note that USB puts out 500mA at best theoretically (IE less than 400mA in reality). On idle phones can use between 15 and 150mA and when in heavy use, like wifi, gps, video, password cracking, high throughput (as in over 500kbit/s) and voice, as much as 600mA. So if you're tethering or running a phone torrent client for fun you may end up eating more power than your laptop's charging and you could even overheat and freeze or damage the phone if you get extreme.

Depending on your phone, different story with a wall charger which in the case of my HTC phone pumps out 1A. Another disadvantage of USB charging versus charging with wall chargers of the likes of my phone is that my charger, I'm told, knows when my phone's charged and eases back the juice so I don't overcharge my battery. USB may not be so smart. So maybe the GP knows about USB and opts for the outlet by the coffee machine. Wants a fast and effective charge, we've all been there. I've heard a few people claim that a full charge from USB tends to run out quicker than a full wall charge but I don't know why that would be true.

I've also heard that charging and using your phone even lightly (with the screen on, open data connection or more) can strain the battery a little too much and heat it up so that charging is much more painful for the long-term longevity of lion batteries.

None of those phones are very popular.

I will note in passing that each HTC model seems to sell between 1-2m each. Not a huge amount, but HTC does have a lot of different units available, and replaces them around eveyr 12-18 months or so. According to Gartner's most recent report, Apple's share of the smartphone market was ~11%, while HTC's was ~6%.

I will say that I was without wired Internet for a week while AT&T tried and failed miserably to install U-Verse. Apparently the 40-year-old rat-chewed internal copper wiring can't take VDSL. Who'd have thought so? Anyway, I cranked up the old Sprint Mogul (HTC Titan) and tethered it, rebroadcasting the 3G signal as WiFi and BT using WMWiFiRouter. Over WiFi, I was able to get up to around ~1.5/.5 Mbps, after initially being frustrated with ~250/50 Kbps. It seems to be very sensitive to phone position and signal strength, and also elevation.

The best thing about this is that the tethering ability is available within the $30/month all-in SERO plan (as long as I use a suitable proxy to disguise the phone usage). Sprint's main problem compared to AT&T and Verizon is that is is so damn cheap and it has found it difficult to raise prices like them and increase the ARPU. I think with the Pre, it wants to can tethering until it's more certain it can successfully and reliably charge a premium for it.

http://global.wmwifirouter.com/features/

Here's a dumb question though...on the features page listed above the dev only talks about 64 and 128 bit WEP. For years everyone has said, "Don't use WEP!" Do anyone feel unsafe using this program on their Windows Mobile phone because it doesn't support WPA?

On a side note, WMWifirouter has been able to do this on Windows Mobile smartphones for a while now. It's constantly being worked on and the speeds are definitely acceptable. The link for it http://www.wmwifirouter.com/

So you're moving from oppresive Apple to oppresive Microsoft. Brilliant.

Microsoft's "oppression" is a lot less overbearing in this case. For starters, I am granted root access to my phone -- no exploits needed -- just pop open the file explorer and edit/replace/delete whatever you want. A necessary consequence of having root access is that I can install any application by simply transferring the file, as opposed to being beholden to an app store with ridiculous and (as we see in TFA) completely arbitrary restrictions.

Those applications, unlike in Android and iPhoneOS, can access the entire range of OS APIs and so we can create a real NAT router (http://www.wmwifirouter.com/ -- absolutely awesome app btw, wifi, bluetooth, activesync all supported) instead of having to make a half-baked proxy application because Google decided not to expose the raw socket API. Quote the makers of AndroidProxy

It's not really a true "tethering" app. Presently we don't have access to any low level packet APIs so it's impossible (without hacking the lower levels of the phone) to write something that does the kind of NAT connection possible with Windows Mobile phones.

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:q-oBbuzOHAwJ:graha.ms/androidproxy/+androidproxy

So we have an open source OS that refuses to give it's users root privileges and deliberately cripples the API versus a closed source OS with a full API and root access -- I'll call that a tie. Add in the huge application base already developed for WinMo and it's a cinch.

WinMo is not acceptable if you have any understanding of usability. I tried 2 different phones for 2 weeks with it and I'd rather use my cheapo Samsung than a phone with WinMo. Now, Blackberry/Android could be considered alternatives, but don't ever mention WinMo as usable. Please.

I actually said that WinMo is not usable out of the box, but quite usable after putting some time and effort into tweaking it how you like it. Most of all, there is a huge (xda,ppcgeeks) community of hackers constantly working at the devices. You used it for 2 weeks and, I'll bet dollars to donuts, didn't even try a custom ROM or a third-party today screen manager. Of course you put it away. I wouldn't use a stock WinMo phone either but my custom version is more usable that the iPhone by a large margin (and I'm using shitty 2 year old hardware that predates even the 2G iPhone).

Of course, this presumes that you like technology and enjoy fiddling with things to make them better. If you are a business guy that's too busy, get a Blackberry. If you are not technical enough to deal with flashing a device, transferring applications and editing settings, go for the iPhone.

Like I said, I'm watching Andriod, but the lack of a good bluetooth tethering solution (USB, lol) with real sockets is holding me back. A few years of application development and maybe we'll talk.

"Units like this are nothing new. "

Exactly. There's programs that have existed for years that turned Wifi enabled cellphones into wifi hotspots. WMWifiRouter is the first one that comes to mind

I read this and thought the same thing. Have been enjoying WMWiFiRouter for a couple of years now. Binds your Windows Phone's 3G signal to the WiFi and re-broadcasts it for association by clients over WiFi or Bluetooth. Interestingly, attached clients score a higher bandwidth (~130%) of the phone's browser running a similar speed test (~1 Mbps). Obviously CPU limited. It amused me in the days before there was a 3G iPhone to let my 2G iPhone friends associate to a Windows Mobile phone using WiFi to accelerate their web browsing.

I have used this to downloaded GBs of torrents to my laptop. For $30/month to Sprint for phone and unlimited texts and internet it's an awesome deal.

"What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go? Incredibly, there is such a thing."

Yeah, it's called a phone!

If you have a Windows Mobile phone with an internet plan, you could use WMWifiRouter(the most advanced of the pack), which has been available since 2007, and was the very first app to do this.

If you have a Symbian phone, you could use JoikuSpot, which has been available since 2008.

To continue, for iPhone you could use PDANet. For Android there are also several programs available as well!

Why would you use something like this and get another data subscription when all you need is already in your pocket? Aside from the internet plan which you are likely to have already, all of these software are available for a small one-time fee - likely lower than one month of the data package itself.

Funny thing, none of those apps ever made it out of the firehose when I posted them. What makes this (very expensive and limited) product so special?

http://wmwifirouter.com/

Which works like a charm. Main uses I have for it is to get my iTouch online when there's no wifi about, or when a few of us are stuck in a ransom office somewhere with no/firewalled net access.

Main issue isn't getting a wifi available over a 3G backhaul (however you want to do it), but rather the quite horrific cost of doing so.

If you already have a data plan for your mobile phone then give this application a try: http://www.wmwifirouter.com/ It will turn your cell phone into a Access point. I use this application all the time when i'm on the road or when my connection goes down at home.

You mean like WM Wifi Router? Yeah I've been using that for about 18 months now already without the need to jailbreak my phone. Plus Sprint's SERO plan offers unlimited texting and data for $30 / month.

Windows mobile wifi router

I've used WMWifiRouter many times with Sprint's SERO plan to bittorrent files (I max out at 100 kB/s up and down on EVDO) on my HTC Mogul.

Combined that with the fact that Sprint's early termination fees have recently been ruled illegal in one county and you have a pretty good setup, but most people can't see past the iPhone. *shrugs*

What, 10 euros a day?

Let's see, I pay 10 euros a month for unlimited (tethering allowed, no hidden bandwidth cap) 3G access on my phone here in Europe. Ok, it's only full UMTS, not full HSPA, but it gets the job done when I'm not on a 8-24 mbit line at home or work. That's 30 times cheaper than 10 euro's a day. What a strange 'simple' figure is that anyway, who spends 10 euros a day on mobile internet?

As for the wifi hotspots, well to be honest I havent encountered many of them and I do live in a big city, but I haven't really searched for them either. I know the university and two or three of my favourite bars have them (never see people with laptops in there, but I imagine it's nice for others who have wifi enabled phones but don't have a data plan). Unsecured access points are everywhere.

Roaming are awful though, especially here in Europe. You go somewhere near the border, you get the same provider but from a different country and suddenly you have to get a second mortgage to google. Glad the EU is looking into it.

That being said, if you are waiting around somewhere and you need internet where your data plan isn't 'valid' (or you don't have one), you can make a wifi hotspot anywhere if you can find somebody with a phone and a data plan with WMWifiRouter or JoikuSpot softwares, depending on the type of phone they have.