Do you tether? Are you stupid?
Now before you go and get yourself tied up in knots over that title let me state that I love tethering and find it very useful. That’s why I was quite surprised and taken aback by an article posted by Mike Elgan recently on Computerworld that sets out to prove Why tethering is stupid and unnecessary. Before you start lobbing hate grenades at Mr. Elgan read through his article and see where he’s coming from.
First up what is tethering exactly? We hear that term a lot and some folks I know have no idea what it means. Tethering is the act of connecting your smartphone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile or other, to your laptop so you can get connected to the Internet without the benefit of WiFi. Many smartphones today have 3G connectivity and it can be used to get a laptop onto the web by connecting them to the notebook. This can be done by a USB cable or even wirelessly via Bluetooth. It can be the difference between not being able to connect to the web and getting some work done and I find it pretty darn useful.
What Elgan is stating in his article is he finds the tethering process itself to be awkward and clumsy and not worth the effort most of the time. I don’t find it to be that way myself once the connection is set up the first time subsequent connections are relatively pain-free for me.
The Computerworld article is really a slam at the pricing practices of the US phone carriers that are "greedy" and make tethering necessary at all. Mr. Elgan wants to see cheap easy connectivity for everyone no matter what, and who can argue with that? So how about you? Do you tether and how do you find the process?
I tether all the time. I am a small business owner and I dont use the internet all that much, just for light web surfing and email, so i see no need in paying for internet at my shop so i just tether. I am with alltel and there speeds are great in my area, also we have a small lake house near branson and tethering allows us to have internet there without paying for another line. So i belive tethering to be a very important feature for me.
I tether on occasion, but I’m not stupid. I use Netshare on my iPhone to tether via wifi, sidestepping Elgan’s problems with Bluetooth and USB. It is somewhat of a chore on the PC side with TCP/IP and proxy settings, but not bad.
I tether once in a while, and I don’t find it to be a pain. Using WinMo, I can do either USB, BT or WiFi, so after the initial setup, everything is quite painless.
However, I will agree with Elgan on one point. There shouldn’t be any reason why one can’t have several 3G “connections” all linked to a single account or profile. Much like how they have “Family packs” where everyone shares the same pool of minutes, everyone should also be able to share the same bucket’o'data.
I did when I had my Blackberry, but now having an Iphone – no need to. When I did I found it useful but I have to agree that the price they charge just to tether was to much…greed greed greed.
I also tether but I’m not going to pay extra for it, I use Netshare. ATT is looking at trying to charge you an extra $30 dollars a month for “tethering”, screw them. Why teather at all?
I’m often at business locations where getting out of the corporate network is a pain or it’s filtered or it’s totaly blocked.
If you have ever tried to get on a public wifi it’s ether not available or not trust worthy.
My phone let’s me get around all that trouble.
On T-Mobile UK permission to tether only costs £5 more than the £7.50 for the ‘unlimited’ data plan, and boosts your soft limit up to 3GB, so I think thats a pretty good deal.
At work my HSDPA is much faster than the shared wifi everyone else is using, so I think it works out pretty well.
And of course on HTC’s latest WM devices (the HTC Touch Pro in my case) tethering is a no-brainer – you plug the USB cord in, and it asks you if you want to share your internet, and thats all you have to do.
I just got the Saga last night and had it tethered in minutes. Now that its set up I can set up the connection in less than a minute, USB or BT. I pay the 15 per month tether charge, because I don’t want it cut off if I am doing something important or show up somewhere and not have it work because they caught me. Seems like this guy just wants a headline.
Windows Mobile on an upgraded T-Mobile Dash with the $20 a month unlimited internet plan. I tether my phone whenever I need internet and there’s not a reliable hotspot available. It’s easy and just works. It’s slow by comparison to a good hotspot, but I’ve had better connections tethered than in some of the hotels I’ve stayed at.
It supports VPN back to the office using the standard windows VPN, and I’ve been amazed at the quality of remote desktop sessions.
My plan includes the T-Mobile hotspots. So I’ve been reasonably happy with the situation.
Honestly – getting connected via BT or USB tethering with my Nokia E61i using the Nokia Suite is easier and faster than setting up and connecting via a new Wifi profile in most cases! What’s amazing is how difficult most phone manufacturers make it, yet how easy Nokia has made it in spite of Window’s general cantankerous networking schemes. I can be tethered online within about 7 seconds over BT or USB with this phone (with T-mo USA if anyone cares).
Now, if only it were as easy and idiot-proof to connect my WinMo6.1 phone for tethering.
Tethering is so simple i don’t why more people don not do it. In the past I have used usb and blutooth. Now it’s even easier with WM wifi router. There are numerous ways to tether. the easiest is using a dial up connection.
I use pdanet, tis pretty easy.
I’m on Verizon and have the unlimited data plan with the $15 tethering option. For my consulting business, I often need to conduct web meetings while on the road and not near a reliable WiFi hot spot. For instances like this when I need to use my primary phone as a modem and still conduct a phone call, I added an additional line to my family plan for only $10/mounth. This is far more cost effective than having the data plan for my phone and my laptop, given how infrequently I need to use both.
I wonder if I could forward inbound calls to my primary line to my secondary line while using it this way.
I thethered for about 20 days and hated it. Such a pain to plug in the phone via cable when you can just have an evdo modem. I paid $15 to be allowed to tether, and then an additional $15 a month for unlimited data, so getting an evdo modem only cost $30 more a month than that.
I’m a tether-er. In fact, AT&T is very close to losing my business because they charge $30 extra to tether, versus Sprint and Verizon’s $15.
I do think, however, that charging extra to tether is unacceptable. By the cell companies rules, I can have unlimited data on my plan for my phone, but a cap of 5G if I tether. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with a 5G cap on my usage, but why should it matter whether I use it on my phone or via tethering? And if there’s a data cap on my usage, why charge me extra for it?
(I’m going to be very curious if the iPhone users are charged extra once their tethering option becomes legal.)
I use tethering on my Mogul and Touch Pro on Sprint whenever I’m at the lake or other place that has no wifi accessible. It’s a great way to have access. In fact, the only thing stupid about it is choosing NOT to do so.
hmmm…i wonder what mike is doing? i don’t think tethering could get any easier. with my winmo phones: i just pair with bluetooth, launch internet sharing on the phone, and connect. three steps and done. on my s60 devices: i launch joiku spot, and connect to the newly available wifi hotspot on my laptop. two steps and done. so i’m not sure what the complaint about wires and troublesome setup is all about. on top of all of that, i only pay $15 for the unlimited medianet package on at&t. no “tethering” plan charge or $60 data card that does the same thing at the same speeds.
I use my BB and set it up as modem. I set BT DUN and use the USB cable. I don’t see in paying more to get a modem when I can just tether up my BB to all my computers I use on the road. If I was using to download heavy files then I can see that a Wireless Card could get you better download speeds, but for my email, and logging back to office server my tether works perfect. Sprint charges a extra $15.00 for this which I think is not that much, a lot cheaper then paying 59.00 and the other good thing is that you don’t have to carry the modem to stick in the laptop; not that a USB modem wouldn’t be that much to carry. I have been in meetings and fire up my M912 to download email send out documents, using BT DUN and without every taking out my Blackberry from my holster.
@Jose: Using the AT&T unlimited MediaNet package with WinMo phones is technically not authorized, at least not anymore. About two years ago AT&T made a huge push that any PDA or smartphone had to have a PDA type data package(more $$$), but a lot of customers slipped through on the MediaNet package. So consider yourself very lucky indeed!
@ Pam T.: you are absolutely right. i have a lot of phones, none of which i get form at&t since i hate locked phones with carrier roms and being locked into a contract on top of that; at&t thinks i still have the razr i got free when i first signed up so that is how i get away with that package. anyone that gets a smartphone from at&t, will get stuck with the $30+ data plan =(
When I tether my Nokia tablet to my Sprint Treo 700p phone (with the tether hack installed, one of the very few reasons why I still put up with PalmOS), it disconnects the connection evey 5 minutes. It’s kind of annoying when I have to click on the connect logo when it’s idle for too long.
However when I tether to a GPRS dumb phone outside of the US, it never disconnects. I don’t know if its a setting within EVDO or within the carrier. But eithering without manually turning it on is very easy to use. You can just pretend my n800 has a wireless modem build in. Open a browser the tablet will do the rest for you. Of course EVDO uses alot more battery than GPRS.
I am just saying this writer don’t know what he’s talking about. Tethering has nothing to do with the pricing structure. I use tether all the time when I am not using an US phone company.
What a perfect opportunity to brag about tethering and how great it works out for me. First off, once you get it done the first time it couldn’t be easier. This now allows me to have no local phone/DSL and still get all the Internet I need at home and while I travel or just head out around town.
Tethering on a $79 plan requires an extra $20 for the unlimited data plus SMS so for about a c-note per month vs. the savings of no local bill or high speed. This saves me about $60 – $75 per month x 12 equals a lot of money that I can now spend on other things plus I don’t get any unwanted solicitations on a home phone
My setup incl a 3G phone incl Bluetooth to a Laptop. The Bluetooth is the weak link but good enough for simultaneous skype video call, a cellular voice call and streaming music.
I occasionally tether. Using windows mobile phone 6.x (T-Mobile Dash), it is so easy, just go to menu and select internet sharing that’s it!
@Jose R. Ortiz:
Think again. AT&T knows what device you have your SIM card in. Sign into OLAM (Online Account Management) and it’ll tell you what your current device is. Sign out, swap the SIM into another phone, wait a few minutes (may take longer), then sign back in. i’m assuming it only properly identifies phones AT&T sells or has sold as i’ve had a few devices show up as “unknown device”.
AT&T could easily tell who’s tethering against TOS and warn them, but i’m guessing for the moment it’s easier to let them slide and go after the ones who abuse tethering by using tons of bandwidth. The iPhone seems to be the device they most actively watch, and it makes sense that they do. With so many people switching to AT&T just for the iPhone, they’d hate to lose all that money that naive customers will dole out for the iPhone specific plan, when the cheaper MediaNet package will work.
I love tethering. i have to admit at frist it was a pain with my t mobile dash because the out of the box internet shareing requires u have drivers that come with active sync wich wasnt all the great for me since i wanted a way to do this without installing active sync. so then i came across a programm called WMwifirouter. and it works great. allows me to share via usb, Bluetooth, or Wifi. and allows me to use my phone as a wifi card so if im somewhere there is wifi but have no wifi card.. i can use my phone ^_^ frist setup was kinda a pain. but after u get the settings just right its painless and enjoyable every other time