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Palm Pre Does Not Get US Tethering Either
fermion writes "The Register is reporting that Palm has sent a note to the Pre Dev Wiki asking it to stop discussing tethering. Palm is worried that its US carrier partner, Sprint, is none too eager to have users tether the game-changing tetherable smart phone. While the communication was informal, not legal, the development forum is evidently eager to avoid any possibility of lawsuits, so has rapidly agreed. Perhaps, like the iPhone, the Pre is going have a vigorous underground. What is interesting is that the Pre, like the iPhone (allegedly), can be tethered outside of the US; but even those customers are being denied apparently lawful information to satisfy the US exclusive agents."
you know who else was adamantly against tethering?
Was anyone really expecting the greedy phone companies to give us tethering?
You have a better chance of TPB and Time Warner merging into one company.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
For those that don't know, tethering is when you tie your phone to your computer and hit it around the computer several times, until the phone brakes your computer screen.
Tethering is legal in all states, but some phone companies seem to object to it, so they contractually prevent you from doing this.
Now that I have an unlimited data plan, if I could just figure out a way to use my telephone as a modem for my computer, because hey, it's my property and fair use laws means I have the legal right to view it on any sized screen I want.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It still hasn't proven itself, not one bit. Don't call it "game-changing" yet.
Sprint allows the these phones to tether:
Blackberry 8703e, Blackberry 8130, Blackberry 8330, Blackberry 8830, 1HTC Touch, 1HTC Mogul (6800), 1HTC Apache (6700), LG Fusic LX-500, LG Muziq, Motorola KRZR, Motorola RAZR V3c, Motorola, RAZR2, Motorola Q, Motorola Q9c, Palm Centro, Palm 700w, Palm 755p, Samsung A900, Samsung A900M. Samsung A920, Samsung ACE, Samsung i830, Samsung SPH-m520,Sanyo SCP-8400. Sanyo Katana, Sanyo Katana 2, Sanyo M
The Pre is nothing special, and Sprint has no idea what it is doning.
Sprint removed it from their website back in February.
Did you really think that an industry that charges 15 cents for 50 bytes of text (IM) that could easily be stuffed into the header overhead of routine handset-to-tower comms would give you tethering for free? really?
Maybe I missed most of the argument here, but my Blackberry storm, from Verizon, can tether if I pay $15 per month. I did that for a while until I could convince my phone company to provide DSL to my area. Why are other phone companies against tethering, or am I completely misunderstanding something?
This space for rent, inquire within.
"This phone is a game-changer. But don't talk about changing the game. The guy who owns the field will kick us all out if we do anything actually innovative. We're the players, you're the audience. We want our money from your tickets, and neither we, nor the guy who owns the field, cares if you actually see a good game. As long as the stadium's sold out, we really don't care if we forfeit the game before the coin toss."
Putting this story above a post about MS is just unfair. People are still busy commenting on the MS thread and will ignore Pre, um i mean this story.
...the US is so far behind the rest of the tech world when it comes to wireless technology, they cannot offer a tethering service because they don't have the infrastructure to do it. It has affected all carriers. If it was only poor planning on the part of one company, that would be understandable. Even if it was poor planning on the part of many companies, one at least could offer this great feature (at a realisitc price) and make a killing. But as it stands...no one can do it at anything close to a price that middle class Americans will pay. Links to the contrary are welcome.
Sorry about the mess.
All these smartphones can tether. It's the carriers that prevent it, not the hardware.
Right now the Pre is US only so no right now you can not tether it if you are on a none US carrier since none of them carry it.
Tethering in the US seems to scar the daylights out of US carriers. Probably because the really want to sell you that data card with an extra line.
I don't know of any US provider that offers tethering. You could probably pull it off with an unlocked GSM phone on AT&T or maybe TMobile but I don't know if you can get a 3g Tmobile phone unlocked.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
People expect that when they buy an unlimited mobile internet plan that it should automatically be able to tether too. THe straight up fact is when you tether your mobile you WILL consume more bandwidth, period. The companies know this and charge accordingly. People seem to forget realities like this, just like the morons who expected a discount on the new Iphone a year into their contract. Iphones arent jsut given to ATT for free, they have a fixed cost, which is subsidized by continued cell service payments generally over a period of 2 years.
Good-bye
The reason tethering isn't widely adopted by the phone companies is because when you're tethering you're often passing more amounts of data than you would with just your phone.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
They want a captive audience. Advertisers love a captive audience. Shareholders love a captive audience. Its us poor slobs in the audience who object with our irrational desire for freedom.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
I got a Centro a little while back and *Verizon* is A-OK with tethering. A short while before that I got a dongle but I hardly ever use it now, because Bluetooth tethering is so convenient.
Verizon doesn't support its tethering software on Mac OS X, but, no worries, you can set Bluetooth dialing up yourself.
BTW The Mac OS X EVDO script is terrible and broken. There's a MUCH better one floating around (I forget exactly which but I think it's the "PCS Intel EV-DO Modem Script"). Also, OS X's pppd likes to hang the computer occasionally (requiring a power button reboot), and Bluetooth dialing in general is flaky. But that's not Verizon's fault!
Tethering really is a killer smartphone app. Too bad providers are so self-centered, unimaginative, and stuck in the past that they can't let owners use it.
So I'll keep using my Centro with all its warts and random reboots, until, however many years from now, Verizon offers a better option.
Yeah, but Sprint allows NO tethering of ANY phones at ANY price - that's the weirdness factor.
Can Slashdot be far behind?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So do the cel companies have a legitimate concern about their networks being overloaded by people running torrents over tethered devices, or is it just a 'we are sitting on our collective arses figuring out how much we can get away with charging for it' thing?
My feeling is that cel carriers in the US are discreetly colluding to keep tethering as an expensive, premium service.
I would like to see a carrier break ranks and include it as a standard unlimited data plan feature. That would force all the other carriers down eventually.
This reminds me of internet access in Australia being metered long after it became flat rate in most parts of the world. The companies have a cash cow and want to keep it that way. However, I would like to think that the popularity of an inexpensive tethering service would make up for that in numbers, provided that the network can handle the traffic.
There are several Sprint phones that are able to have tethering too. I really don't understand phone companies lately.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Um...I pay Sprint $15 for tethering.
This is especially irritating because I was just starting to look around for an iPhone alternative that would allow tethering, background apps and no restrictive app store policies, etc. etc. all the reasons why the iPhone is essentially a nerfed technology demonstrator.
Here is a great case of the technology being far ahead of the networks that support it. I think some of the major device providers should get together and form a network that is designed from the ground up to support data first and voice second.
Here's a simple solution I offer to all carriers free of charge.
Write a custom tethering app for each phone, that starts a recording of the volume of data sent via tethering - give me a low price or free option for some smallish amount of data to be used via tethering, with some increasing tier thereafter.
This would satisfy 90% of people that just want to occasionally tether a laptop at a sucky hotel or airport.
People who want to use it as a primary ISP would of course be forced to pay more, and that is fine.
Could people work around it easily? Why yes they could, just as they can jailbreak these phones and get tethering for free. Isn't some money better than no money?
Would it record phone data as part of the tethering data? Yes it would but if you're tethering then you're mostly using a laptop, right?
Furthermore unreasonable tethering prices or locking down tethering will force a LOT more people to jailbreak phones (OK, not force, but greatly encourage). Along with that come all the other network hogging behaviors in addition to tethering you never get to charge for again.
Give us 90% of us a reasonable option for occasional tethering at low cost and everyone will be happy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What is to stop someone from installing proxy or NAT software onto their (perhaps jailbroken) smartphone? Can cell providers really prevent this?
Morons? Let's see. Right now us morons have one year left on our contract. This means we've paid for about half of our phone. Now we want a new one. Most of us morons would accept starting over our 2-year contract if it meant we could get a discount. Given that our existing phone will be "paid off" in 1 year, that leaves an entire year of payments that could be applied to the new phone. If I didn't have a plan, and wanted a contract, I could get one for $200. If I wanted no contract, it would be $600. This means the contract subsidizes the phone at a rate of about $200/year. So, if I can extend for a year, why shouldn't that roughly split the middle and allow me to get an upgrade for $400, if I wanted one?*
*Yes, this doesn't discount future payments, but for the sake of argument the point is still valid.
How is tethering really any different than buying a wireless cellular modem for your laptop? Those devices are happily sold with data plans - tethering your cell phone just cuts out one additional device. Are they really making that big a profit on those plug-in wireless cards?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Why are other phone companies against tethering, or am I completely misunderstanding something?
Simply: they want you to pay for service, but they don't want you to really use it very much. They want to charge you a hefty fee for data access, and justify the price by saying it's "unlimited", but they really don't want you to use the service very much, because lots of people using it means they have to spend money to expand their infrastructure. If you can tether it to your computer, you'll probably use more bandwidth. Obviously they'd much prefer that you paid for their most expensive data plan and then never used it at all.
Like Sprint and Clearwire's Wi-Max network?
PdaNet already supports some Palm phones: http://www.junefabrics.com/palmnet/. And, I heard somewhere that they are planning on porting their app to the Pre.
Another device crippled by another half-baked service scheme that oozed off the completely broken US communications ecosystem.
I am in complete awe of how backwards the US is compared to Europe and Asia in this regard. It's just weird.
Before I get excited about things like these (and I do want to) or even consider buying one (and I do want to), they need to fix the basic problems, not just make better gadgets and hope everyone stays ignorant as to how bad they have it compared with the rest of the world.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Seriously, it is stupid for people to think that their "unlimited" plan is "unlimited". Who do they think they are?!?!?!?
So, if I can extend for a year, why shouldn't that roughly split the middle and allow me to get an upgrade for $400, if I wanted one?
which is exactly what it will cost you. You will pay $199 for the new subsidized handset, plus a $200 upgrade fee since you have not finished your current contract. So yes, you can indeed upgrade for exactly the price you consider fair ($399)
So should they still call their plan unlimited if it truly isn't unlimited? I tether my laptop to my G1 wherever I go, granted I only use it for routine browsing and SSH but my plan with T-Mobile includes unlimited data and I've never had a problem with them limiting me. Yes I know that no plan can truly be "unlimited" so why not simply cap a traditional broadband plan at 100GB per month or a mobile plan at 5GB? 95% of users wouldn't come close to those numbers and the companies could simply slow people down who go over.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
*cough* http://gizmodo.com/5291473/how-to-enable-palm-pre-tethering *cough*
My sprint phone, the motorola q9c tethers for free. My last phone, the samsung a900 would not tether for free. I have an unlimited data plan so the tethering gets used whenever my home connection is down
This is complete bullshit. Reverse engineering has always been legal in the US. Talking about in a public forum is likewise perfectly legal. No big media or telecom entity can do anything to stop it. If Palm doesn't like this they should have taken bigger steps to lock the phone down. The devs should proceed as normal and ignore the veiled threats from Palm.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Companies aren't selling goods and services any more, they seem to sell permissions and licenses. What these companies should be selling is a connection and that's it. It should be completely separate from the hardware, and they should not be able to dictate what hardware is allowed on their service, or what you do with your hardware. They should not be allowed to regulate what is transmitted on said line.
And there should be at least 40 of these companies, not four.
We need to block all these company mergers, and encourage more start ups to increase competition. And we need to create regulations for the market to stop this nickle and dime shit these companies are allowed to get away with, separating the service from the hardware in order to increase innovation and competition and give rights back to the consumer. These companies have too much power to dick over customers. Whatever happened to treating the customer like a valued customer in this country? Is every single major US company run by a half-assed dickhead who only knows how to make money by screwing customers?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
This is just another example of Sprint ruining the Pre release.
My wife and I bought two at launch (we were at the sprint store at 7 AM) and were initially absolutely thrilled with the device. We are still thrilled with the device itself, but Sprint's service is absolutely terrible. The Pre insists on using an extremely weak Sprint signal over the MUCH stronger Verizon or US Cellular signal that it can also detect, which means that I am dropping several calls a day unless I intentionally put the phone somewhere where the Sprint signal is blocked and thereby force the Pre to roam.
As a result, I will be returning both Pres, the two touchstone docks, two leather cases, and a Sprint Airave we bought to provide decent service to our house. Overall, we invested more than a thousand dollars in the phones and related equipment because we really wanted them to live up to the hype. The phone itself is amazing and *does* live up to the hype, but sadly Sprint's network is simply pathetic in my area and makes the phone all but useless.
When the Pre is released for Verizon in January, we will be first in line.
I think that for a lot of people, they only require tethering very infrequently, such as where WiFi is unavailable of too expensive, and they need net access for their laptop. I would happily pay £5 for 24 hours, since I would likely only use it once a month at most. In the UK, O2 are offering £15 a month for iPhone tethering, but that's too much for the amount of use I would get out of it.
I don't understand why carriers want to prevent users from tethering. If I paid for X amount of bandwidth, then I am allowed to use X amount. How does it matter how I use it? Does tethering cost anymore to the carriers than say, pulling all your data onto the device itself? I guess some years from now, people would be laughing at how stupid the carriers were .. and perhaps even record this as one of the industry's greatest mistakes. Carriers just don't get it (or I should say I dont get them carriers).
First of all i am not a layer
Second i work in exactly the telecom env
third i am not in the us but in Europe
so taking all that in mind i still got a suckin idiotik phone that is used only as a phone (it does it's job as a phone) as are most of the people in the telco business (excluding managers). In my personal opinion the moment you can use your phone as a regular Modem you are basically unstoppable. And you know using a modem to connect is nothing new revolutionizing or whatever.
Some people said you are going to draw more bw ... then why they are seling unlimited. If it is unlimited it means UNLIMITED. It does not mater that you are one of the measly 0.5% that uses more than 2 TB a month because you know how and can make good use of it.
Also take in mind the following: As much as i despise the Iphone and similiar stuff for claiming being a phone they really are marketed as a multimedia computing platform ... so phone features are just a bonus not main driver (if you don't know/care/dare to use the other features ... well you need simpler "stick that can talk". Any Goddamn forsaken stupid app that can leach at tremendous rates even being deployed on a "phone" is not a wise move and they've called it upon themselvs so they've got to live with it
Everybody oversells, telcos oversell enormously and of course win enourmously.
End point of the topis is "If i can get to the modem i can and i will use it and nobody can prove otherwise"
PS: excuse my typing mistakes ... it's a bit late and i am up for about 60 hours already ...
In fire we trust http://www.getoto.net
Maybe I'm just missing the point. But I see two use cases for tethering:
1. Once in a while you need net and the only thing that can do it is your phone. But most of the time WiFi does the trick. I can see wanting to do this with a smartphone but the carriers shouldn't have a problem with light use of this sort.
2. You are away from WiFi a lot, or want it as a primary connection. If you have a netbook or laptop handy most of the time why did you get a smartphone? If I were in that situation I'd want the smallest most phonelike phone I could get that supported bluetooth and tethering.
But AT&T Sprint seems to fear large numbers of customers people want to spend serious coin for oversized premium smartphones so they can leave them in their pocket and bang away on a laptop, sucking up gigs of bandwidth they meter by the GB anyway.
Democrat delenda est
"iPhone alternative that would allow tethering, background apps and no restrictive app store policies"
thats when you get an android
The most important question is "How is this Apple's fault?" I'm sure there's a reason!
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.
Da Blog
People expect that when they buy an unlimited mobile internet plan that it should automatically be able to tether too.
And I expect a pony for christmas, still not going to happen. Expectations mean exactly zero in contract law where there is a written agreement. In the case of the wireless carriers, the service agreement is quite clear that the unlimited mobile internet plan can only be used on the mobile device.
Now, if the literature or the salespeople lied about that when asked (you know, when you have an expectation it's a good idea to ask whether everyone else has it too, otherwise the contradiction in unspoken expectations can be quite unfortunate) you'd have a pretty good case for fraud and misrepresentation. I'd love to see some citations to the effect that there was any misrepresentation of the fact that unlimited mobile internet does not include tethering.
"and almost everyone I know on Sprint or Verizon has one."
How pathetic are you that you need to lie about this on the internet?
Kill yourself.
Here's an idea: allow tethering. Limit it to 50 megs a day. Charge a $1 more is you want to get unlimited tethering that day. Simple. Your casual user isn't going to get a card. Your business user isn't going to tether all the time when corp headquarters can get a laptop wwan built in. Plus aren't you supposed to be pushing XOHM wimax sometime soon?
Is to allow phones to pick up services a-la-carte.
Let my data come from one provider,
Let my voice, voice mail, and caller ID service come from another,
This whole idea that the carrier gets all of your a-la-carte services is, quite literally, retarded. Once we can split our services among carriers we'll see real competition again. Don't like Sprint's data policies or rates? Get it from Verizon instead.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Tethering is connecting other devices like a laptop to the phone to use the phone's internet.
For some reason, I couldn't remember that and had a hell of a time attempting to figure it out since the raw definition of tether is a cord that anchors something movable to a stationary point. Tethering as used in the article is more or less a play on this idea as the phone is tethered to the device (laptop) but stationary is more or less relative and no necessary.
Last I checked, the G1 is only available through T-Mobile. The terms of their agreements PROHIBIT tethering on any phone, including the G1.
I mean, they had Google pull a tethering app from the Android app store because using it constituted a violation of the user agreement.
Are things different in Dallas?
I did not know what tethering was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethering
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
What these companies should be selling is a connection and that's it. It should be completely separate from the hardware, and they should not be able to dictate what hardware is allowed on their service, or what you do with your hardware.
Hm, why does that sound so familiar? I sometimes shudder to think of what the market would look like if decisions like that one were being made today. Then again, who knows? Maybe they are and we don't even realize it.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
AT&T is simply being arrogant.
There is NO technical difference between using an iPhone as a USB or Bluetooth DUN gateway, and using an AT&T sponsored USB cellular WAN device.
They allow the latter so they should allow the former.
Their concern should be the all-you-can-eat data plans that they offer for handheld computing vs notebook computing. They should simply charge a FAIR and competitive rate to what they charge for the USB WAN devices.
If they think, which may be true, that smartphone users will consume even more bandwith than the laptop users would, then simply price the data plan appropriately to allow it while constraining usage as to not negatively affect their network.
I could and did tether my old motorola phones using Bluetooth DUN on the tmobile network, and although slow by today's standards it was nice when I needed it.
If you take a look all mobile data plans are capped at 5GB on all carriers in the US.
I agree with the idea of a 24-hour or 48-hour tethering access plan. Most of the time I'm somewhere that there is free or cheap internet access for my laptop, but occasionally I've been somewhere where I've used tethering on my old Sony-Ericsson phone to get online for some quick browsing, such as making an on-line hotel reservation. I really don't need a monthly plan for tethering, as I've had the need maybe 4 to 5 times a year on the average. And I've not had tethering at all for the 11 months I've had my iPhone.
As nice as the browser in my iPhone is, sometimes I can just do things quicker or easier using my laptop's browser.
I would love to find an unlimited internet plan with a mobile company that doesn't define Unlimited as being 5GB in the fine print.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
This is exactly right. I wish some phone company would start simply charging for all services based on what those services actually cost to provide. Text messages would be (nearly) free. Data transfer would be charged a basic rate, regardless of the type of data and whether or not is was tethered.
There would be no need to choose a "plan." Why should a customer have to make a GUESS as to how much data transfer they will use in a month? Currently, if a person guesses too low or too high, they get overcharged either way.
If all the providers ran this way, they would have to compete on price, and would be motivated to find ways to bring prices down.
I think some of the major device providers should get together and form a network that is designed from the ground up to support data first and voice second.
I think people should build a network designed from the ground up to support data storage and forwarding first and... well, voice is a kind of data.
Maybe if different networks arise, they could interconnect and come to traffic swap agreements.
Someone for the love of spaghetti, please, embed telephony into the internet and sell us portable internet devices which does web browsing, email, IRC, instant messaging, games, voice chat (i.e. telephony), data transfer, the pocket calculator app, alarm clocks, a frigging NTP client (hello, phone makers and network operators... it's called a network. You use it to exchange data. Then the user can do less work. Hello? He-llooo?)
Phones suck. The telephony network sucks. Telecoms suck. The internet doesn't.
The straight up fact is when you tether your mobile you WILL consume more bandwidth, period. The companies know this and charge accordingly.
Seems to be mostly North American companies. I was quite surprised when I found out that my cheap data plan was for "phone browsing" only. It's not how it works across the pond - there, you usually just pay for your traffic, and that's all there is to it.
quite clear that the unlimited mobile internet plan can only be used on the mobile device
Can you explain exactly what it means to "use" bandwidth? Because the argument can certainly be made that only the phone is using it. It's the only thing talking with the carrier, right?
HDSPA tethering in Japan on Docomo's network costs $8 as a base fee, and then $50 up to 50MB of data. Then it goes up from there to a cap of $100 for 100MB. After 100MB, the charge does not increase. This is for up to 7.2Mbps
Is every single major US company run by a half-assed dickhead who only knows how to make money by screwing customers?
No, prostitutes are clitheads with very full asses who make money by screwing customers.
The difference is, when you pay money and subsequently get screwed, with the prostitutes at least you get what you pay for.
I have been tethering for many years with my Sony Ericsson P910 & P990 phones on T-Mobile.
But I guess technically T-Mobile is an EU company.
It's an issue of semantics. The providers thought that they were offering unlimited data plans to use with the built in web browsing capabilities of the phone. Not unlimited data plans for phones that are connected to computers and used like modems. Soon enough there will be enough of an uproar over the ambiguity and the lawyers will get together and come up with some new terms that more clearly define things in favor of the providers.
The term "unlimited" doesn't mean anything in advertising anyway, and savvy consumers will know this and not expect that anything will be unlimited. I'm all for passing a law banning the word "unlimited" from all commercial advertisement, but the fact is you need to read the terms of any contract you sign up for. May the company with the best contract terms conquer. Hopefully the people who are buying Pres and iPhones are reading their contracts so they don't get any false expectation of "unlimited" data or the possibility of tethering. Buyer beware.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Yeah, but that's the advantage of operating what's essentially a cartel-- they don't have to really compete. Part of the reason they've kind of started to get reasonable about this stuff is that Sprint has been trying to really compete, because otherwise they're out of business. So they've started offering relatively cheap "unlimited" plans.
But where I really think things are going to fall apart for carriers is when someone offers real dumb-pipe high-speed wireless access. Once you can buy whatever device you want, not have to deal with whether carriers will "support" something, and have high bandwidth and low latency enough to support VoIP, cell carriers will find themselves in a world of hurt.
Of course, I wouldn't bet on that happening any time soon.
Give me a fucking break. You and I know exactly what it means. It means the phone is not to be be used as a middle-man for data to transfer between the cell company and some other device.
Nit-picking will get you nowhere.
Look: If you are willing to buy a data access plan to a wireless network on the following terms:
-Higher per-month cost than access to traditional wired infrastructure at lower bandwidth;
-Access is sold on a per-device basis, meaning that if you own a laptop and a smartphone and want them both online, you must pay twice;
-Specific technically inconsequential data packets cost exponentially more than all other packets (txt messages);
-The device you connect to this network automatically prefers to use other wireless networks when possible (802.11);
Then you are a fool. Speaking as one such fool, I recognize that the market is so corrupt that there is no intelligent option for the buyer, but that does not make me any less a fool than the other 40 million people who also agreed to take part in this chicanery.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Sorry, the providers had no illusions that people were not going to try to use phone as a modem. This isn't 1982 after all.
Sprint, AT&T and all the Wireless carriers are looking a couple moves ahead and a couple moves behind. How many of you still use land lines at home? 30%? Tethering will eventually kill the cable/dsl market in the same way. Sure 100kb/s and bad latency will keep these lines in place for now, land line operators thought the same thing in 1995, but the service will improve. In 15 years, the cell phone connections will be 10 Mbit+ and 50% of users who don't download ultrabluerayHD movies will be able to replace their 49.99 cable/dsl subscriptions with them.
Sprint and AT&T see this coming and don't want to give it away for free and kill their acceptable price point for their inevitable slaughter of the cable/dsl providers. They want to charge you 69.99 for a cell/home data plan.
If a data card costs 30 bucks a month with 5GB of data, the carrier should allow people to tether and pay that same 30 bucks a month for the same 5GB of tethered data. Simple and means people dont have to carry a data card AND a phone around.
It shocks me how tethering is still a taboo subject for carriers and certain phones.
For the last three years, I've been able to tether quite easily whenever I want, with unlimited transfer, at 2G/3G speeds, using my AT&T data plan and a Windows Mobile phone.
I did it when I had the HTC 8120, then the Tilt, and now the Fuze. And for each one, I just plug it in via USB and wait about 10 seconds, then off I go. Right now I'm in a hotel, not paying $10/day for their wireless.
I pay AT&T a data plan fee, with tethering, which is about $50/mo. It's unlimited, and includes data on the phone (for browsing plus Exchange sync, etc). For an extra $10/mo, I also get unlimited SMS and MMS (texting and photo transfers).
The speed depends on where I am. It's never been slower than about 120k, and been as fast as about 700k. Unless I'm in the middle of no where, then I'm lucky to even get a signal.
-David
but if you're tethering then you're mostly using a laptop, right?
Unless you live in an area that can get EV-DO but can't get cable or DSL. Or is satellite Internet more cost effective?
And there should be at least 40 of these companies, not four.
How do you recommend that we magically open up more RF spectrum for more companies?
The Pre Dev Wiki link provides some truly puzzling prose. First they repeatedly tell us that they were not threatened, and were not contacted by lawyers, then they tell us there's no secret agreement with Palm, and then they feed us this line of horseshit:
Erm, what legal agreements are we talking about? Between whom? If lawyers weren't involved in this discussion, and if Palm didn't threaten these developers, what gives? If the legal agreements are between Palm and Sprint, so what? An independent group of developers isn't beholden to legal agreements between Palm and Sprint unless they signed something (a contract, say) agreeing to be bound by an agreement between other parties.
Yeah, because Sprint removed all mention from tethering from their Pre web pages.
On a separate but related note, I found the Register article pretty cringe-worthy, especially how they kept referring to AJAX as a platform for the Pre as well as the early iPhone. (AJAX is a programming style, not a "platform," and the Pre's software development platform is HTML 5 + JavaScript, with the HTML 5 engine providing a SQLite database for local storage.) The mention of native apps on the Pre was tantalizing, though all the Register would say is that such apps would be limited to Palm partners.
Suddenly, the iPhone development model doesn't look so locked-down and controlling.
ATT charges $30/month. Definitely not worth the cost for me. Shame, as it would come in handy every now and then while not near an AP. But I'm not paying some $360 a year for something I may use maybe 2-3x. It'd be nice if they had a plan that included tethering at no cost, and simply charged, up to that $30 if you go over a certain byte count in a month or something.
Is anybody here using ATT's plan? I've been able to get my linux laptop to see the phone as a modem over bluetooth. AT commands work, etc. When trying any number of options for connecting using the various howtos, the negotiation starts, but then ATT disconnects. Is this normal since I am not on the plan yet? I'd hate to spend that $30/month only to find out I still can't connect to the #!@#$!@$ network.
Sorry to follow up to my own post. That's $30 in addition to the $30 already being payed for the 'unlimited' data plan.
Here's a much simpler solution: the phone companies should charge for the amount of data transferred. Regardless of whether it's going to the phone or to something else.
There! Now the phone company can take their nose out of my electronics, and concern themselves only with the interface between my stuff (phone, laptop, etc) and their stuff (the phone network).
Do you work for the providers? I'm sure you could safely say that they understood that some people might figure out how to use them as modems and do so. Like just about everything else when it comes to corporate America and capacity planning, they probably failed to properly estimate the magnitude of the issue.
It's an issue of semantics.
No it isn't. It's a matter of self-entitlement (although saying so results in '-1 Troll').
The providers thought that they were offering unlimited data plans to use with the built in web browsing capabilities of the phone.
Actually, that's exactly what they (Sprint-Nextel in this case) offer. Look at the advertised features. Enter your ZIP Code here to look at the plans, and notice the ones which say Unlimited Data. Click for more information, and read the note about tethering.
Look at the Everything Data plan for example, which (naturally) includes Unlimited Data. Clearly stated, 'Phone as modem or tethering: not included.'
Not unlimited data plans for phones that are connected to computers and used like modems.
I agree completely with this sentence fragment. The providers *knew* (you used the word 'thought' which incorrectly implied that the providers' belief might not be true) that they weren't offering an unlimited data plan for phones that doesn't include tethering but also does include tethering. They knew this because simultaneously not doing it and doing it would break the time-space continuum, a move against which Sprint-Nextel's lawyers highly advised them.
Soon enough there will be enough of an uproar over the ambiguity and the lawyers will get together and come up with some new terms that more clearly define things in favor of the providers.
They already did ages ago in the original advertising and contracts, which suggests that they have read your post and used a time machine. There is currently *no* ambiguity if you read before clicking 'buy' or leaving for the Sprint store. There is *very little* ambiguity if you ask or click one link for 'More Information.' The terms are in favor of both the provider and the customer; Customers may purchase the Phone As Modem plan ($15 per month for a 5GB cap or possibly the Unlimited for $40 if it is still offered) to allow Tethering, a much more resource/bandwidth-intensive, optional feature for the provider to offer. Otherwise, it will cost '$0.03 per kilobyte' to use.
If that's your list of requirements the phone you want exists already, its called theHTC Dream, may also be called the G1 in some countries, you might also look the HTC Magic if it's been released in your nation yet (OK, OK, Australia so rarely gets things before the States, permit me a little bit of scheudenfraude).
BTW, if you cant find it on the Android marketplace, here is the tethering app that doesn't require root access.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
No, prostitutes are service providers who always have an emphasis on making their customers happy. Telco's clearly are not.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If what you say is true, then certainly a bright young man could make a fortune offering the exact services you describe.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Apple's website states this:
Surf the web from practically anywhere. Now you can share the 3G connection on your iPhone with your Mac notebook or PC laptop. Tethering is not currently offered in the U.S. and some other countries. See your carrier for availability.
So by allegedly, they really mean. . . for real.
"See your carrier for availability." means:
The phone has the functionality, but if our exclusive carrier has a hissy fit, that functionality is disabled, because if the carrier wants to charge you more money for that we won't stop them. We think different on everything except that.
***Current iPhone 3G owner. Love the phone, not a fan of AT&T, but yes I was willing to deal with AT&T's less then stellar service in order to get the phone.
Self proclaimed wannabe geek. You know how it is. Most of us who read this stuff probably fit in that category.
Most unlocked smart phones allow tethering; they just look like USB modems to the computer. They work like a charm with Ubuntu 9.04. You can get an unlocked Nokia E51 for less than $200.
Why is there this obsession with tethering on the iPhone and Pre, either on the part of carriers or on the part of users?
What I don't get is that the unlimited internet, is anything but unlimited, its 1/3gb fair use. What f**king difference does it make how I use it?
If I go over because I used my phone as a modem, the carrier/operator is going to charge me more (at stupidly high rates) or disconnect me.
The only plausiable explanation is that even the 'fair use' cap that all the carriers is actually more than they can handle (or their infrastructure is so innefficent that its too expensive for them). So without tethering no-one is likely to hit the 'fair use' cap, cause only the machosist would squint at a phone screen for that long!
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
So called 3G (3rd Generation) mobile networks were designed just for that. You do not need 2Mbit/s connection for phone calls..
That's why it's also dead easy to get a USB modem that operates on mobile network, and unlimited data plan for it, if you happen to live in Europe.
20 euros to start with and then 10e/month is the usual rate. Because that's what the 3G was designed to do.
http://iki.fi/zds/