Update: iTether is gone from the App Store. A quick test shows that the service is no longer working for tethering my iPad connection to my Mac, either. It might be because Tether.com couldn’t handle the server load from so many users trying out the service, though, so we’ll keep trying to see if it starts working again. Let us know if the app continues to be usable for you.

Amazingly, Apple approved an app called iTether that lets you share your iOS device’s data connection with a Mac or PC over USB — regardless of whether or not your carrier allows tethering, and without jailbreaking. Even more surprising, maybe, is it works with 3G-enabled iPads, too.

Tether, the company behind iTether, is no fly-by-night organization, either. The company has offered tethering solutions for BlackBerry devices for quite some time now, and I have often taken advantage of its services in the past. Now, it has somehow convinced Apple’s App Store review team to allow it to release an app that provides tethering even to people whose plans specifically forbid it. There’s no guarantee your carrier won’t be able to identify the extra usage and incur charges after the fact, or present you with an ultimatum  requiring you to pay up, but it works nonetheless.

Here in Canada, most of our carriers offer iPhone tethering as part of your basic smartphone data plan, so there is no additional fee and everything works out of the box with Apple’s own built-in personal hotspot tech. But I also carry a 3G iPad with me wherever I go, and have often thought I’d like to use that connection with other devices, since I have the plan anyway. ITether running in compatibility mode on an iPad 2 worked perfectly for me, sharing its 3G data connectivity over USB to my iMac once I managed to download and install the server application (I used this mirror, since Tether.com’s servers are taking a beating).

It would be nice if I could broadcast the connection over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, instead of having to have my iPad plugged into the computer I want to share the connection with, but it’s still nice to have the option available. ITether is in the App Store now for $14.99, but I can’t imagine Apple’s major U.S. carrier partners will be very happy about this, so buy at your own risk. We’ve requested more info from Apple about the app’s approval, and will be sure to update you if its availability or status changes.

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Another reason I find the 3G relatively useless is that I can’t tether my connection to other devices, like I can with my iPhone. If I could share my 3G connection (ideally wirelessly, but let’s not get greedy), then I’d get far more use out of my iPad’s connectivity.

The just-released iPad OS 4.2 beta 2 reveals that tethering could potentially be on the way. There appear to be settings for tethering in the new beta (via 9 t0 5 Mac), right where they’re located on the iPhone, under “General>Network” and hooks for cellular tethering server information under “Cellular Data>APN Settings.” If you’re using the beta in North America and you can’t find the screens in question, it’s because they’re not there.

The Internet tethering options for iPad have so far only appeared on an iPad running on 3′s network in Europe. The fact that this is highly localized could mean one of two things: either Apple’s early testing is happening only on a single network to test its quality and effect on the network before wide release, or only certain markets are going to see iPad tethering at all. While I hope for the former, I fear the latter is true.

Since the iPad’s contract-less, cancel-at-any-time data plans are already quite the bitter pill to swallow for wireless companies who are used to long-term, locked-down contracts with downright unscrupulous cancellation fees, it’s unlikely they’d be interested in adding any further perks to the deal.

Carriers in North America will wait and see if they can’t foist competitors’ tablets on customers first, thereby ensuring themselves a greater share of the profits. If that doesn’t pan out, and customers still insist on buying iPads in droves, they’ll likely relent and provide tethering to attract more subscribers to the monthly plans.

Just out of curiosity, how many would buy a 3G iPad who don’t already have one based solely on the introduction of tethering?

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It’s easy to make a claim that AT&T is effectively cutting the quality of its 3G service, but that’s the gist of what it announced last night via a press release. The timing of this release is odd as it conveniently came a couple of hours after Steve Jobs stood by them at Wall Street Journal’s D8 conference in Southern California. When asked about Apple’s relationship with AT&T, Steve Jobs said things are, “pretty good actually” and that the wireless provider is “handling way more data traffic than all of their other competitors combined.” Steve may be right as he followed up with an assurance that the AT&T network would improve by the end of the summer.

Shortly after journalists had their chance to weigh in on the interview, AT&T announced changes to its 3G data plans. Press releases are generally pretty dry so I’m going to lay out exactly what happened and how AT&T managed to time things perfectly to fit its needs and not the needs of its customer base.

First, let’s point out that on June 7, tethering for iPhone will be available, which is the same day Steve Jobs takes the stage at WWDC. It’s a breath of fresh air that iPhone users in the U.S. will finally be able to have tethering via an official means…only 9 months late. Of course, AT&T wasn’t just going to give us tethering for free and without limitations, since AT&T’s data network is already strained with millions of iPhones and other data-hungry smartphones.

In order to add tethering to your iPhone, you have to switch to the new data plans, specifically, the DataPro plan. Before this change, iPhone users on AT&T would pick a voice plan plus a data plan that was $30 a month and that included unlimited data and tiered SMS plans. Voice and SMS prices remain unchanged but AT&T is going to drop the term “unlimited” from its data plan offerings and let users pick between two plans.

• DataPlus: Includes 200MB of data per month for $15.
• DataPro: Includes 2GB of data per month for $25. Add $20 if you want tethering.

AT&T’s angle is that its most expensive data plan is now $5 less which is good for consumers but the fine print is that the previously unlimited plan is now a 2GB per month plan. To be fair to all wireless carriers, unlimited was a term that should have been retired long ago. Verizon and Sprint’s unlimited plans are roughly capped at 5GB even though it’s not a set in stone number. AT&T’s was rumored to be around the same cap per month. Assuming 5GB is the average data cap for U.S. carriers, prior to June 7, iPhone users on AT&T were paying $6 per gigabyte each month and now they’re paying $12.50 per gigabyte, so AT&T’s spin of making wireless data cheaper for the general public is a stretch at best.

I’ve written about AT&T before and received phone calls from corporate communications with their spin and I assume they’ll tell me that a majority of users never use more than 2GB of data so this plan is more accessible for the general public and will save the average DataPro user $60 per year over the current plan and casual data users on the DataPlus plan will save $180 per year. That’s great, but what about the users like me who would like to use their phone as Steve Jobs intended? The iPhone is one third “Internet Communicator” according to Steve’s 2007 Macworld Keynote and I’d like to be able to use it that way. Well, AT&T has an answer to that as well.

It’s promoting a free addition to all AT&T users on the DataPlus or DataPro data plans which is unlimited access to any of AT&T’s 20,000 Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the U.S. This is a perk that AT&T has given away to iPhone users for quite a while now, so if you call up complaining about hitting the 2GB limit, they’ll simply direct you to the nearest Starbucks as a solution for your mobile Internet needs.

Tethering is only available to DataPro subscribers at an additional $20 a month. This is in line with what other carriers such as Verizon are charging for tethering on devices such as RIM’s Blackberry. AT&T notes that this won’t be available to iPhone owners until iPhone OS 4 ships, “this summer.” It’s unclear if tethering will affect the 2GB per month limit of the plan but I’m confident that AT&T is going to enforce it heavily.

AT&T didn’t forget about Apple’s iPad saying that, “the $25 per month 2GB plan will replace the existing $29.99 unlimited plan.” which effectively kills the deal that Apple announced at the iPad launch that many customers bought into when they purchased the 3G iPad. For legal reasons, any iPad users currently on an unlimited 3G plan at the old price will remain on this plan with no changes to service. In other words, activate your 3G iPad service immediately for unlimited 3G goodness while you still can. Remember, as soon as you cancel the 3G iPad service and decide to start back again (since there’s no contract required), you’ll be on the new $25 a month 2GB plan.

To recap, AT&T is dropping “unlimited” data, doubling the price per gigabyte for 3G customers, offering tethering but charging $20 for it on top of the $25 a month DataPro plan and telling iPad users that unlimited data is no longer an option. Steve Jobs assured us that AT&T service would be improving, but it looks like the wireless carrier has decided to simply cut our data and raise the price in order to do that instead of actually improving their service to fit the needs of the user base.

I’m sympathetic to AT&T’s bandwidth issues but that’s how it is when you’re the carrier of the highest selling and most data hungry smartphone on the market.

What do you think of the new changes?

The email, as quoted by 9to5 Mac’s Seth Weintraub, says:

Just reading again – where did anyone promise tethering by EOY? Where did you see that? We promised MMS by end of summer and ended up being a few days late for that…

In their defence, 9to5 Mac was channeling reports from TechCrunch and CNET which got them to arrive at the “before end of year” conclusion. You can hardly blame them — CNET’s headline in November 2008 read “AT&T confirms tethering coming to iPhone in 2009.” That’s pretty unequivocal as far as assertions go, right? Yet, I don’t recall anyone from AT&T sending CNET a snippy email in the interim…

Last week I wrote how AT&T told the Wall Street Journal that it needed ‘more time’ to work on tethering functionality. I also mentioned how AT&T’s CEO Ralph De La Vega said, way back in 2008, that tethering would be available “soon.” A year later it’s not unreasonable to wonder just what De La Vega’s definition of “soon” might be.

Add together the history of dropped calls, patchy 3G coverage and recent reports that the company might start throttling data for iPhone users, the snarky email above only adds to the sorry state of affairs at AT&T. However kindly you may choose to interpret that email, there are countless ways it might have been more professionally composed.

For a company still enjoying exclusive distribution and service rights for the iPhone across America, (and the prestige and profits that partnership with Apple entails) its performance in the last two years can only make us hope Apple is considering offering the iPhone to other cell carriers willing (and actually able) to do the job properly.

In any case, while the email doesn’t specifically deny tethering will become a reality this year, it certainly makes the proposition sound unlikely. AT&T announced last month it is working to expand its network, and have invested heavily in the hardware upgrades necessary to do so. That’s welcome news to long suffering customers, but those upgrades aren’t going to be completed until the end of 2011.

Or, as Mr De La Vega might put it, “soon.”

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We reported here on Tuesday that AT&T had announced plans to make VoIP services available on its 3G network, great news for iPhone users who previously could only use applications like Skype and Vonage via a Wi-Fi network. So, AT&T sorted out MMS and now it’s sorted out VoIP. That just leaves tethering, right? Now that it’s upgrading its network and fixing everything that was wrong for iPhone customers, tethering has to be just around the corner, yes?

No. According to an article from the Wall Street Journal, an AT&T spokesperson says it needs more time to work on that functionality:

Whenever we offer new features, we want to offer the best possible customer experience. For tethering, we need to do some additional fine tuning to our systems and networks so that we do deliver a great experience.

So I won’t mention how, late last year at the Web 2.0 Summit, AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega told Michael Arrington that tethering would be available “soon.”

Clearly AT&T is struggling to cope with the data demands made by modern smartphones on its creaky old network. Speaking this week at the annual CTIA Conference in San Diego, and reported by PC World, de la Vega hinted at possible future steps the telecom giant may take to lessen the load. “We have to manage the network to make sure that the few cannot crowd out the many,” he said.

PC World’s Mark Sullivan thinks this can only mean one thing: placing hard limits on the total amount of data iPhone (and other bandwidth-hungry smartphone) owners can consume.

In the face of exploding data service demand and scarce wireless spectrum, does AT&T intend to quietly begin rationing the data usage of bandwidth hogs like the iPhone? Will AT&T begin to quietly “manage” the duration and speed of my 3G connection based on how much data I’ve used in a given day, or on the type of content or services I’m using the bandwidth to access?

AT&T announced in September that it was working on upgrading its network, but the process will take time. Is throttling data a necessary solution in the short term, until the network can more adequately meet the demands of the (growing) smartphone market?

In an article yesterday on All Things Digital, John Paczkowski reported that a staggering 4.1 billion text messages are sent every single day in the U.S. (740 billion in the first half of 2009 alone). That’s double the number in the same period last year.

According to the CTIA, there are more than 246 million wireless data-capable devices at large in the U.S. today. Of these, 40 million are smart phones or PDAs, and more than 10 million are laptops. Little wonder that wireless data service revenue rose 31 percent to more than $19.4 billion in the first six months of 2009.

Chart from CTIA

It’s not hard to see that AT&T is behind the curve when it comes to bolstering its data network to meet the demand of its customers. So far behind the curve, in fact, that its competitors can afford to take legitimate shots at the company in television commercials.

So what’s the solution for long-suffering iPhone customers? Jumping ship and moving to Verizon? Or remaining loyal to AT&T, avoiding the hassle of changing contracts and giving the company time to improve its network and expand its services? It’s already had the better part of three years. How much more patience will customers have?

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One of the big, new features of the iPhone is its ability to tether. BlackBerrys have had this ability for a while, so below I have outlined how to tether your BlackBerry with your Mac to use your Internet connection to browse the web with your computer.

Some Things to Note

• This tutorial is for Leopard.
• I have successfully tested this with a BlackBerry Bold and a BlackBerry Curve 8900 using the 8800 modem drivers, but it should also work with the BlackBerry 8100, 8700 and 8800.
• Some service providers have a special tethering plan that you may need to add to your cell phone. (It will work without the tethering packing, but you might get slammed with overage charges if they catch you.)

Configure Your BlackBerry

1. Open “Manage Connections.”
2. Click the checkbox next to “Bluetooth” to turn Bluetooth on.
3. Scroll down to “Set up Bluetooth.”
4. A pop-up will come up to name your device; name it.
5. An “Add Device” pop up will come up; click “Cancel.”
6. Click the BlackBerry menu; select “Options.”
7. Set Discoverable to “Yes.”
8. Save changes.

Configure Your Mac

1. Download & Install BlackBerry modem scripts for OS X.
2. Go to System Preferences → Bluetooth.
3. Check “Show Bluetooth status in the menu bar.”
4. Click on the menu bar item and select “Set up Bluetooth Device.”
   
5. A pop-up will appear; click “Continue.”
6. Select “Mobile phone” as the type of device.
7. When the computer finds your phone, select it and click “Continue.”
8. You’ll be given a passkey. Enter the passkey into your BlackBerry.
9. After successfully pairing your computer with your BlackBerry, you will get a pop-up that asks, “Accept connection request from (your computer)?” Click the checkbox “Don’t ask again” and select “Yes.”
10. Your computer will now ask, “Access the Internet with your phone’s data connection?” Click the check box, and select “Continue.”
    
11. Enter the following information into the appropriate boxes. (This is for AT&T. Do a Google search for other vendors.):
    • Username: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
    • Password: CINGULAR1
    • Phone Number: wap.cingular
12. Save and close.
13. Now open up network preferences: Applications → System preferences → Network
14. Click the Plus Button.
    • Interface: Bluetooth
    • Service Name: Whatever you want, I named it “Tethered BB”
      
15. Enter in all the information again:
    • Username: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
    • Password: CINGULAR1
    • Phone Number: wap.cingular

    

16. Click “Advanced:”
    • Vendor: Research In Motion
    • Model: BlackBerry 8800
    • Dial mode: Ignore dial tone when dialing

    

17. Save Settings.

Connect to the Internet

Make sure Bluetooth is enabled on both you phone and your computer!

1. Click the Dialer icon in your menu bar.
2. Select Connect Tethered BB (or whatever you named your connection in step 14 of setting up your computer) from the drop-down menu.
3. After a few seconds you should be connected!

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So you’ve got a brand new iPhone 3G S and you want to know if you can use the AT&T tethering workaround everyone’s been talking about? Yes, yes you can. It’s all remarkably easy. It’s almost like Apple wants us to use this workaround — at least that’s the story I’m telling myself.

The good folks over at 9to5 Mac have the step-by-step guide, but essentially all you need to do is run a quick terminal command to turn on the preference in iTunes, download an iPhone carrier update file, restore the iPhone, and as Steve would say, “Boom.” You’re all set to start tethering, just navigate over to Settings → General → Network → Internet Tethering on your iPhone and throw the switch to the “On” position. If your Bluetooth isn’t running at the time, it will generously offer to switch that on for you. At that point, just connect your phone to your laptop through Bluetooth (if you haven’t connected before you will have to pair them) and you’ll be sharing some 3G goodness.

All told, it took about 5 minutes to get it working. I did a quick test checking e-mail, browsing around, etc., and the speed over 3G was pretty good. Right after the connection was established, I did happen to get a nice little welcome SMS from AT&T, but I don’t know if that was coincidence or by design. I’m assuming the message was just the normal welcome everyone gets with a newly activated phone, and that it just happened to be remarkable timing.

It’s unclear what implications the use of tethering in this manner will have for your monthly bill from AT&T, so please use at your own caution. It’s at least nice to know though that I can use it in a pinch if needed. Hopefully AT&T will soon catch up with the rest of the iPhone providers and establish an officially supported way to take advantage of this functionality.

Worth noting is that some users have experienced trouble with their visual voicemail following this procedure. If you do have trouble accessing that feature, simply navigate to Settings → General → Network → Cellular Data Network and within the Visual Voicemail section add “acds.voicemail” into the APN field. Once that is done, you will be able to once again use your visual voicemail.

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This week, Apple deviated from their usual biweekly update schedule and released yet another installment of the iPhone OS 3.0 beta. As of last week, the beta has been accompanied by an iTunes 8.2 pre-release build, and an updated version of that accompanies the beta firmware and the SDK. Aside from the single-week interval, the beta is also unusual in that it was released on a Wednesday night, instead of a Tuesday, when Apple has usually released new iterations in the past.

There are a few different reasons Apple might be stepping up the release schedule. First, WWDC is coming up very soon, and they might be speeding up the development schedule in order to get a stable product out the door come early June. They might also have picked up on a nasty security vulnerability before anyone else did for once, and therefore a quick patch along with any bug fixes completed to date was required.

There’s a final reason for the early release, which seems to be best supported by the information available to date. It looks like Apple has tried to block MMS access entirely for Beta users by preventing people from being able to switch carrier .IPCC files via iTunes. With all earlier builds, it was possible to do a force restore to an edited version of the file, which users had managed to hack in order to enable tethering and MMS on their devices, which were not meant to be available to users until the full version of the OS is released. The update also hides MMS features in the iPhone’s GUI for U.S. users. The MMS functions have never been visible on my iPhone, which is Canadian.

Apple looks to have pushed out an early release specifically to stop users from fooling around with hacked .IPCC files, and given the odd timing of the release, probably at the insistence of AT&T and/or others of their carrier partners. It’s possible that the early iTunes build was introduced specifically to stop this, and that the first build either didn’t succeed or was introduced early just to allay suspicion as to its ultimate purpose. This also seems to indicated that the beta pool is large enough that unauthorized MMS and tethering usage was actually having a significant effect on carriers.

Either way, we’ll have to wait and see if developers come up with another workaround. If not, there’s only a month left before WWDC ’09, so users anxious to get MMS and tethering up and running won’t have long to wait.

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A MacBlogz source is claiming that the AT&T’s iPhone tethering their CEO Ralph De La Vega mentioned last week as coming “soon” will roughly add an additional $30 to your plan.

It is rumored to offer a 5GB/month allowance with the expected speeds of “GPRS: 30k – dialup speeds, EDGE: 110k – ISDN speeds, 3G: 1000k – slow broadband.” This would match AT&T’s current tethering option for BlackBerry customers and the plan, overall, works out to about $0.006/MB. That doesn’t sound terribly expensive, but for users who were planning to use it for data extensive applications and desire unlimited data, they will supposedly be told to “get a wireless PC card.” However, oddly, while BlackBerry customers can pay for additional data at more costly $.48/MB, iPhone users will purportedly have their service “automatically disconnected” if they “use too much bandwidth.”

Considering that iPhone 3G owners already have to pay a mandatory $30/month for “unlimited” data, this will come as a bit of a sting to some users. Even more so considering the brief availability of the now infamous NetShare app that took advantage of said iPhone’s bundled data plan to offer tethering at a one time fee of $10 for the cost of the program. However, it should be noted that, while Apple has not utilized it, they do have their “kill switch” that makes it possible for Apple to reach into your phone from afar and disable malicious applications. There is nothing to say that once AT&T’s tethering option is finally available — which still has no timeframe for availability as they are practicing “extreme caution” with this roll-out — that Apple might not exercise this option and disable NetShare forcing users to go the official route.

While most users probably don’t use a significant amount of data on their iPhone’s alone (looking over my previous months data usage, I averaged at about 200MB/month), it would be easy to see how once tethered to a laptop that would no longer be the case, especially for mobile professionals and frequent travelers who are constantly on the go. As more and more is done online, AT&T is looking to profit from that. Just last week, they announced that they would join several other U.S. broadband providers in testing tiered pricing for home internet users. Charging an additional fee for iPhone tethering would most likely fall in line with making a distinction of the level of services and options (and possibly speeds) you are allowed.

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Brief-lived application, NetShare, previously offered a way for the iPhone to act as a modem for laptops, but was quickly pulled, briefly re-introduced, and then pulled again. The removal/reinstatement/removal probably had something to do with behind the scenes discussions between Apple and AT&T, which likely concluded in the decision to go forward with an official, sanctioned tethering solution developed by the two.

De La Vega did not provide any details as to the pricing or timeframe for release of AT&T’s official tethering plan. Previous reports indicated that part of the delay stems from AT&T’s fear regarding the additional burden iPhone users with tethering plans would place on their 3G network.

It’s also unclear just how much demand there is for an official solution, especially given the fact that it could possibly come at a steep price.

iPhone users: Is the ability to tether important to you? What do you consider a reasonable price for an official solution?

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