For those who haven't jailbroken, Tethering available soon says AT&T

Cleve Nettles
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November 06, 2008
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Besides Qik video streaming, currently the number one reason to jailbreak your iPhone is easy, fast, wifi tethering.  We currently use PDANet which takes about 10 seconds to get going and runs fantastically over Wifi.  You can even attach more than one computer and all of your Internet apps work (unlike NetShare).  The one downside is that it does wear the battery down pretty durn fast.  Not a problem if you just plug into your laptop's USB however.

Back to the news at hand.  AT&T is announcing that they are going to probably make some sort of 3G tethering plan available.  Bluetooth?  USB?  Wifi?  No one knows.  However, what's almost certain is that it will cost more than the PDANet's $Free.99.

You'll have to excuse us if we're not excited.

Comments (11)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 06, 2008 - 2:45pm

Still a problem when you plug into USB. PDANet drains battery faster than it charges... i still get the 20/10% warnings when plugged into usb! a full charge only lasts a few hours when plugged into USB.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 06, 2008 - 2:54pm

$Free.99? Whats that supposed to mean?

admin | November 06, 2008 - 3:00pm

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=free%2099

evo (not verified) | November 07, 2008 - 11:11am

$Free.99 is a joke! Get it?
Everything is sold as $[any figure].99, so why not free too?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 06, 2008 - 6:16pm

but not with the pay as you go plan and the second lowest entry plan

evo (not verified) | November 07, 2008 - 11:13am

Official tethering for free from AT&T? Where did you get this from?
Does not make much sense...

Cory Schulz | November 06, 2008 - 9:05pm

 Yeah, this is lame, and a waste of our time. This is just another way for them to try and make money. I don't really need something like this. Hell, I don't even own a laptop. And this will be free on the Android platform. If I really, really needed something like this that badly, I'd just jailbreak my iPhone. No way in hell I'd pay ATT another $30 a month to tether.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 07, 2008 - 6:20am

As it is now my next phone will be a Android
.
The iPhone is great and can a lot of things.
But you have to jailbreak it to get it to do the thinks that is normal on most phones, but AT&T don't want you to do.
-That is ok in USA where AT&T is the provider.
.
But I live in Denmark, and my provider do not have the same restriktions as AT&T, but still I'm under the AT&T rules, for that is what apple is developing there iPhone to.
.
.
So if they just make 2 firmware, one to the AT&T custemers and one to the rest of the world, where they drop the AT&T restriktions.

evo (not verified) | November 07, 2008 - 11:00am

$Free.99 is a joke! Get it?

Everything is sold as $[any figure].99, so why not free too?

evo (not verified) | November 07, 2008 - 11:08am

I would assume that AT&T is able to detect tethering, maybe because the program who requests data leave a signature that would be different from the one the iPhone leaves, or maybe also by the high amount of data transmitted.

If so, you would have problem with your contract with AT&T.

But what is it really? Can anyone provide feedback from atual experience, tethering day in and day out. Is AT&T blind to it?

Thanks!

evo (not verified) | November 07, 2008 - 11:10am

I meant tethering today via jail-breaking, of course...