Comments on: Tethering is exhilarating

By: Nikolaos Dimopoulos

Nikolaos Dimopoulos — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:09:38 +0000

By the way awesome spam catcher. It caught me once :)

By: Nikolaos Dimopoulos

Nikolaos Dimopoulos — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:09:16 +0000

Steve,

It is really refreshing to read that I was not the only one that really needed tethering.

My story though was that when I called AT&T they insisted that tethering is illegal (against their TOS). I tried to tether as less as possible since my daily commute is 5 hours, 3 of which on the train. You can understand that I need tethering so that I can do some work while on the train.

After jailbreaking the iPhone and using tethering this way everything was perfect. I was using the iPhoneModem application (I had the 2G model) and was a happy camper.

When I decided to switch to Nexus One (I have documented this here: http://www.niden.net/2010/02/from-iphone-to-nexus-one-review/) I had to find a way to tether.

The Cyanogen mod (for the root access to the Nexus One) is a hit and miss. I have read a lot of posts of people that either loved it or hated it. I opted not to install that.

The tethering options were either PDANet or EasyTether. I wanted to be able to tether my notebook without any cables so PDANet won (they offer Bluetooth DUN – EasyTether is still working on it).

Even with the slow EDGE network of AT&T through the Nexus One I manage to get work done and download files that I need. It is a pain to wait since the connection is not the fastest one but it works.

[quote]+1 for tethering without jailbreaking. All smartphones should do this.[/quote]

Amen to that!

By: Steve Souders

Steve Souders — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:37:17 +0000

Thanks for all the great feedback and pointers. My comments about iPhone not tethering are totally based on me being in the US and thus forced to use AT&T.

@Beseiged: Still, if you want to use PdaNet on the iPhone you have to jailbreak the iPhone.

By: A Kee

A Kee — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:09:50 +0000

I’ve been tethering on my iPhone in Canada on the Rogers network since I got it last summer. Works great in Canada and even where there is free WiFi I don’t even bother sometimes as I get better bandwidth than some clogged pipe at Starbucks.

By: Jim MacKenzie

Jim MacKenzie — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:04:10 +0000

Let’s be clear: the iPhone tethering problem is not an iPhone problem, it is an AT&T problem. I tether on an unlocked iPhone on Rogers in Canada – the only requirement by Rogers is that you have a data plan of one gigabyte or more. The iPhone is perfectly capable of supporting tethering without any hacking (there is a lovely little gadget to enable it in the configuration)… *IF* the provider allows it to be there. AT&T does not.

By: Polyclef

Polyclef — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:46:58 +0000

FYI, we’re the publishers of EasyTether for Android. Works on the Nexus One with support for both 32 and 64-bit Windows. And at $9.95 it’s less than half the price of PdaNet:

http://www.cyrket.com/p/android/com.mstream.easytether_polyclef/

By: Walter Aprile

Walter Aprile — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:16:17 +0000

Yes, I agree: tethering is cool. It is cool today, and it was quite cool also in 2001, when I was doing it with a Nokia phone, infrared and a Dell laptop. It has been cool ever since, and Nokia has been supporting it since, as somebody observes, the early neolithic.

Apple users get really excited about tethering is a bit like someone being happy because space aliens removed his ears, and then glued them back on.

By: Robin

Robin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:40:22 +0000

It’s very sad to see that you americans are held hostage by your greedy operators, refusing you to tether your net connection to make full use of the smartphone you pay so much for.

Here in Sweden (and, I believe, in most of Europe) our operators have allowed tethering on the iPhones they sell since day one – I’m personally on a flatrate subscription with no bandwidth or traffic amount limitation, that costs me the same as most other “Turbo3G + USB modem” package deals; circa 25 eur / month.

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:17:44 +0000

I’m tethered on an iPhone right now. I am paying O2 (UK) £10/11€ extra for 3 GB of data. However don’t expect your battery to last too long, after about 5 to 6 hours mine is out.

Getting the tethering working in Vista over Bluetooth took only a few mins.

By: ugol

ugol — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:07:12 +0000

This article is misleading: tethering is wonderfully supported in “regular” iPhone OS 3.1.x, I use it every day with TRE mobile operator in Italy and I tested it in UK too. You basically only have to switch on the tethering option in Settings and it works (USB/Bluetooth)
The issue is probably with AT&T, not with the iPhone itself