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Google Allows Carriers To Ban Tethering Apps
iluvcapra writes "Google, in its continuing struggle to provide phone carriers (if not its end users) with an open platform, is now banning tethering apps from the Android market. These apps haven't disappeared and can still be sideloaded, insofar as your carrier doesn't lock this functionality or snoop on your packets."
From what I've seen (from screenshots) they're not banned as such, but they will not load to a specific carrier if that carrier has asked that it be blocked. You can still side-load it, with your carrier's data charges being incurred at your peril.
It puts more load on their network if you use up your five gigabytes of monthly data with your laptop instead of your cell phone, unless you pay extra for it.
Google Allows Carriers To Ban Tethering Apps
I beg to differ, and here's why.
Android based smart phone users are not prevented from installing tethering apps from elsewhere. In fact, one can [still] install them if on the Sprint network.
What Google has done is to 'comply' with Verizon's request to have tethering apps removed from the Android Market if this market is accessed by Android devices *on* the Verizon network.
This falls short of a ban as implied by the diction in the title.
By jailbreaking your handset, and telling the carrier to be more honest in their marketing next time if they complain?
Also, while I'm aware that this could only be considered 'on topic' by the most tenuous of standards, I'm surprised we got a term so positive as 'jailbreak' into mainstream usage. The connotation that the phone as-provided is trapped in a jail, and that the user is freeing it by hacking the OS, seems like a reasonable analogy to me, it's just that I would've expected the carriers to go for a bit of negative PR. Something along the lines of "Sure, you could install that evil communist app that hasn't been authorised by an upstanding corporation's store, but you'd need to terrorist-molest your phone to do so. You don't want to do that, do you?"
With virtually all carriers capping virtually all plans these days, any rationale for preventing tethering disappeared.
Now it is simply GREED. They have special plans that add tethering. Therefore you can't tether for free any more.
They can't claim network impact. As long as you stay under your Cap what is the problem?
There is precious little data to suggest tethering users actually use more data. I know I don't. Sometimes I just want to
send an email attachment that happens to be on my laptop. Some times I need to SSH into a server and can't put up with
trying do deal with a command line task on that tiny screen.
But it seems the defenders of this clamp down all seem to be rushing to defending the carriers because the carriers
rely on the "over sell" of their bandwidth. Any user that approaches his CAP is therefore somehow stealing from
the carrier. (I kid you not, I've seen this argument posted).
But even to reach that level of gullibility you have to buy into the idea that people who tether use more data. But its just not supported by the facts.
The coming release of a flood of WIFI only tablets, with no continuing data plan for the carriers has a lot of people planning to tether these tablets for those few times a year when traveling where there is no handy WIFI. The carriers are trying to nip this in the bud, and they believe that every handheld device needs to have a carrier plan.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
There is a difference between jailbreaking your phone, and checking a check box.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
This totally works. Yes. This makes it impossible for anyone without your VPN keys to inspect your packets. VPN is just an encrypted P2P connection. Carriers will not arbitrarily block encrypted connections. Ergo, this is technically how to overcome any attempts to block tethering by the network provider. If carriers begin to routinely block tethering, this is how the technically adept will respond.
Here is another example of why all traffic on the internet should always be encrypted. Should we fork the internet, this is how the new, forked version will have to work.
This is a feature of 2.2 (and above) unless your evil phone carrier disables it. (T-Mobile is happy with me using it.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The carrier sells you 'x' GB/month of total data transfer (where x=data_rate*seconds_in_month if they sold the plan as 'unlimited'). What the hell difference does it make which device those bits happen to end up on after transiting through your phone?
You just have to have the vpn server on port 80 or 443 and you'll look a lot like https :)
That's what I do to get on my vpn from the library.
The distinction is that, on Android, you can load up a tethering app without the need to install some shady jailbreak and compromise your handset's security.
"Shady jailbreak"? It's Apple that has a problem with shady jailbreaks, not Android.
In any event, it's called "gaining root access" or rooting in the Android universe, and secondly there's nothing shady about gaining control of your own property. Let me ask you: would you tolerate HP, Dell, or for that matter Apple locking down your desktop machine in such a manner? No? Well then.
Furthermore, if you aren't on a complete dick carrier (I'm looking at you, AT&T) the standard Android Wi-Fi and USB tethering options are built-in. No need to download some shady app from the marketplace or even bother to root. Tethering is actually a part of the current Android releases, has been for some time now, and if your Android device doesn't have it it is because your cheapass, bloodsucking wireless provider thoughtfully removed it for you.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Actually, in Android there are multiple layers of rooting:
1: Getting a root prompt.
2: Keeping a root prompt and changes done, as opposed to having the phone soft-brick (until it gets reflashed), or automatically reinstall itself.
3: Being able to keep the root prompt across a reboot.
4: Being able to modify filesystems, mount them read/write and have changes persist across reboots.
5: Flash a ROM, kexec()ing around the signed kernel, because the bootloader is encrypted. Other than the Droid and the Xoom, this is the best modders can do with Motorola devices.
6: Flashing a completely customized ROM with a custom kernel.
7: Disabling anti-consumer crap completely on the device and allowing the user to do what he/she wants. This is how the Nexus and other Google items ship (fastboot oem unlock.) Complete unlock means that the device is not carrier locked, nor locked to a certain ROM. This is why I highly recommend GSM based HTC devices -- IIRC, almost all of them can have "S/OFF" flipped, so they don't care what ROM or carrier they work with.
In Australia the word root means sex!
A while back it was not possible to buy non-free (beer) applications from the Android Market from my country. Only when I put in a SIM that belongs to another country was I able to even see for-pay applications.
Market regularly uses the SIM card to identify which network you belong to and adjust the applications you can see accordingly.
For the sake of the test, though, I've tried just that. I removed the SIM card and searched for tethering in the market (with the SIM card it resulted in both free and for-pay results).
Without the SIM card the results seem to be exactly the same. Have not downloaded any of them (no need, as my carrier charges by the MB, and is happy for me to use as much traffic as I possibly can, and my phone has tethering built-in), but the results list seems to include all of them.
So, yes, at least preliminarily, it seems like you can bypass the restriction by simply removing the SIM card.
Shachar