Image courtesy Pre Thinking
Palm has politely suggested to a group of WebOS hackers who have put together a way to tether the phone to a laptop to share the 3G connection that they should not do that, as it might make Sprint mad. Phone carriers don’t support free tethering as a rule, and in the case of the Pre, Sprint doesn’t even offer a tethering plan for pay. Palm made it clear to the team at the Pre Dev Wiki that if Sprint pressures them about the tethering, they may have to shut the wiki down.
We have been politely cautioned by Palm that any discussion of tethering during the Sprint exclusivity period (and perhaps beyond–we don’t know yet) will probably cause Sprint to complain to Palm, and if that happened then Palm would be forced to react against the people running the IRC channel and this wiki.
It is good that Palm is taking a soft stance so far, as it no doubt realizes how important that hacking the WebOS can be for getting innovations under way. All parties involved in this seem to be quietly sticking their tongues out at Sprint over this.
(Pre Thinking via My Pre)
“US Phone carriers don’t support free tethering as a rule”
EU ones don’t seem to mind.
These “no tether” disclosures are getting ridiculous. For years I paid T-Mobile the 20 bucks extra on top of my voice plan to get unlimited data on my old HTC MDA. Nobody ever gave a hoot if I used the tether feature on the phone to connect with my notebook and surf the web. It was nothing more than a feature of the device – you either used it or you didn’t.
Telco companies are greedy mongrels, they want you to pay $60 for separate broadband when for years the hardware has been available for any phone to connect you to the web. Handicapping technology does nothing more than send development backwards to the stone age. I am sick of these corporate fat-cats telling me what I can and cannot do.
tethering gets you at most 2 down and .7 up. you can get better connections using skyfire on your device with your data plan. if you are only tethering for e-mail or quick site look ups, why not just use the smartphone?
My phone, my data! I can only use what the phone can handle and no more. I can’t use both the phone and a tethered laptop on the internet at the same time. Or can I? I can’t justify paying and extra $60 a month for a MiFi to pull up information that will not open on the limited programs on a Palm Pre. Sure it would be nice and it was on the Palm Treo 755 I had tethered to my laptop prior to July. However I never expected to get a robust connection but it did save valuable time for me on occasion. I’m sorry Sprint, but if you can’t move forward we’ll find a way to move on without you. In fact if Sprint would just approve the use of tethering the data they wouldn’t be able to keep the phones in the store for the next couple of years. In fact some folks might consider severing their home connection if they use the internet on a limited basis and that could put Sprint in a position of dominance over the entire U.S. cell phone / Smartphone market (Sprint Power Vision; oxymoron). If I ran Sprint I’d market a program that that allows one device a WiFi connection and market the Hell out of spare batteries, power supplies, and power cables. And better yet, design the software and then leak it out as if it was some mythical rouge program that only the most in tune people even know about (A “Viral Application” if you will). MiFi is a lame marketing ploy; it’s basically another phone, so buy a Palm Pro (as a second phone ; edit Office documents, mail them back to people, and actually open PDF files) and tether away! I’ll stop while I’m still ahead; this kind of proprietary crap just tends to irritate me. Right now I’m considering the iPhone as you can tether 3G right now without issues.