Official Sanctioned Sprint Tethering for Pre: Not Likely 24
by Dieter Bohn Thu, 29 Oct 2009 3:18 pm EDT
Sure, the hardcore among us know and love MyTether (at right), but what if we want fully above-board, simple, carrier-sanctioned tethering?
Unfortunately, that doesn't look to be in the cards for Palm Pre and Sprint. Sascha Segan at GearLog checked out the chat Sprint put on with exec David Owens and laid out plenty of points, including "No tethering for phones that require Everything plans (such as all smartphones) from here on out."
It's a bummer, but unfortunately it's not really a surprise. What was a bit of a surprise was Owens said we can expect WiMAX phones next year - we wouldn't spit on some sweet 4G action.
24 Comments
fine, ill just do it anyways =)
Ditto here.
It makes absolutely no sense that my POS Motorola Q9c could do it with a single push of a button, on a $15/month data plan, yet on my much more expensive everything plan it's unacceptable. It's just asinine and stupid.
For me it was well worth the 15 bucks (for mytether) just to throw sprint the finger.
In the same article it says "They're considering an Android phone with a built-in MiFi-type router.". So ... what's the difference? Would the built in router require a second number/account (unlikely me thinks)?
Nah. WinMo phones already act like MiFi with WMWifi installed. Chances are they will be putting out an Android phone with a Wimax radio and this kind of software built in for an extra charge. Their rates are already the lowest so I wouldn't quite mind if it was just another $5 or so. If it's a lot more I'll just wait for the 3rd party apps that do the same thing.
Except $84 a month (that is my bill, complete, with taxes and insurance) is HIGH ENOUGH. And if you think they would charge only $5 more... well, you are dreaming.
My Sprint bill is higher than my 20Mb/s home cable modem + land line while being only a tiny fraction of the use.
MyTether worked beautifully for me until the 1.2 webOS update. I haven't been able to get it to work since then in spite of updating the app and hours of futzing around, even after I donated and got the 2.x version. Support for MyTether is an incomprehensible mess. Bummer. It was fun while it lasted, though.
you need to use Jason's installer. it works for me.
What's a Jason's installer?
has there been any word from June Fabrics? I would love to see both PdaNet and PdaReach on WebOS.
Yeah, they all pull this as tethering is something they charge a lot for. I've been hearing similar rumors of an upcoming Android phone with a Wimax radio. That would be nice because I use their Wimax at home as my ISP so it would be nice to consolidate.
If they can get a nice, large screened, thinnish QWERTY slider with one of the new OMAP chips, Tegra, or Snapdragon and running whatever 2.x version of Android is out at the time, I might just have to upgrade come June 2010.
doesn't look to be in the cards
Nice pun...
Should have kept my treo 755p......BS
Sprint used to charge $15.00 a month for tethering on some of their phones. Mostly the Window Mobile phones. I had it for a year or so and it wasn't bad but there seemed to have been a slow down that started in the spring. This way around the same time as when sprint started pushing their USB and MIFi devices and the $69.99 a month plan.
I think it is safe to say they would much rather be getting the $69.99 in addition to your normal plan. You would think dropping the price down to price level of cable and DSL would make the MiFi fly out the door and drive AT&T and Verizon out of the market.
Can someone please explain to my why it's only the most expensive plans that can't have tethering? That seems completely backward.
More importantly, only those phones which REQUIRE you to get the most expensive plans..?
Well I imagine it's because they provide unlimited data, and if you can tether, then you can pull data using more than one device and it could be a lot more data. If it was a plan where you paid by the MB, then they wouldn't care so much.
Except, it really ISN'T unlimited.
Having an all inclusive plan over the older piece meal plans saves Sprint millions monthly because of plan management errors. Before you could have everything thing ala cart and would cause huge billing errors due to someone wanting to add something then changing their mind and calling back in to delete it and then changing their mind again, Then claiming they didnt know they didnt have the feature (not always the consumers fault but a lot of the times it was/is). With the new plans having everything included there is no worry of overages and plan errors as much anymore. With that came the inability to add a PAM feature since the plan wont allow you to add any codes that would conflict.
Also PAM was/is a $45 buy up not $15. You are required to get a $30 premium data plan and an additional $15 PAM add on if you have anything BUT the Everything Data Plans that we have with the Pre.
http://community.sprint.com/baw/community/sprintblogs/chat-with-buzz/blo...
there is the transcript of the whole interview... Depending on the question you read:
G-189339073: Are there any plans to bring back a tethering add on to the everything data and simply everything plans
David: not at this time.
then later:
Pnyce973NJ: Verizon plans to release an Android with a Built in MIFI? Is that something we can also expect from sprint?
David: A feature we are considering for future devices.
So, Since MiFi is in fact tethering, I would have a hard time seeing it allowed for Android but not on the Palm Pre... (If so Palm should be raising hell with Sprint, as this will drive customers away from Palm.)
On tethering,
I haven't tried this yet, but does the DUN bluetooth profile work on the pre vs. having to use mytether? What I discovered with my crackberry before moving over to sprint for the pre is that ATT would like to charge $30 extra a month for unrestricted tethering, but I found if I used DUN with the standard WAP gateway, that web and IMAP over ssl at least worked, albeit quite slowly. The way they are set up, you can switch for a day and switch back and never be charged though (shhh :-) ).
Last time I tried BT tethering it didn't work.
The messed up thing is that you can use a Pre to give out network access if it's coming off of wifi. So if you have a BT-enabled computer that doesn't have wifi, you can route IP traffic through the pre.
Just. Not. The. Other. Direction.
Thanks. Alot. Sprint.
With the new installer is it user friendly or do you have to do all kinds of complicated nonsense?
Guys, really, if you want info on the My Tether app, go to http://forums.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/191213-my-tether-tether-over-.... If you plan on using the app, you really need to do some reading to figure out how everything work. Once you have it down, it is fantastic!
I love tethering. That's why I've backed up my wifi driver. =)
As stated in my previous post: Palm and Sprint whacked tethering again with update 1.3.1. This is why I purchased put options on Palm and tripled my money. Thanks Palm. Thanks Sprint. Your executives are idiots. They are driving your companies into the dirt and raping it for big salaries to do so. Poor engineers and developers will be out of work while your execs are on vacation in the Caribbean.