Comments on: Dear cellular carriers, Internet Sharing is good

By: Arlen Dominek

Arlen Dominek — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:04:46 +0000

My Cingular 8525 died one evening a few weeks ago. Not being able to live while traveling without a mobile phone, I went out and paid $600 or so for a new 8925. Note that three AT&T customer service reps couldn't figure out why I would go out and buy a new phone when I could just wait a couple of weeks to return home, where my warranty replacement would be waiting for me. (Also note that I couldn't get a discount because I had shelled out money for the 8525 just 11 months earlier; it really rubbed me wrong to see that as a new customer, I could pay $300 with a two year contract - and get a $100 rebate.)
At any rate, I tried to tether my new phone, but I just couldn't. (Oddly enough, I had been able to tether two PC's with my old 8525. Admittedly, it only took 10 or so phone calls along the way to get my AT&T VPN to play with the 8525 tethering - success finally coming by reaching VPN Level 2 support.)
So, after spending 23 minutes on hold last night while being subjected to an onslaught of non-stop commercials and terrible rave-style, repetitive music, an AT&T support person told me that I was on the wrong plan, that my current plan did not support tethering. I thought that that was pretty odd given that the reason that I was on the Cingular PDA Connect Unlimited plan, rather that the MEdiaNet plan, was to support tethering - otherwise, MEdiaNet would have given me everything that I need on my little ol' 8525.
Since it was after 2AM, I decided that I would have to call back later. Today, I learned that I would need the Data Connect Unlimited Plan with Tethering. This would only cost me another $20 a month to have what I just had a month ago with PDA Connect Unlimited. The AT&T rep told me that technical requirements had changed, and I had a different device. Yea, that's it. A different device on the same network. I told him that if he were paying $30 to have his oil changed on his car and the garage jacked the price to $50, he would probably go a different service provider. (He had previously indicated that all of the other service providers would be the same.)
For the heck of it, I asked what a separate data card would run me. I was told that it would be about another $70 a month - in addition to my voice plan and my PDA plan. Great, eh? Add that on to my T-Mobile hotspot monthly bill (for Hyatts and Crown Rooms) and my monthly AT&T broadband (DSL) service at home. Oh, the occasional hotel fee when I'm not at a Hilton. Just great, eh?
Now, I wonder if I could just use Internet Sharing - not that it's so easily found on AT&T's implementation of Mobile 6.0 on the 8925...

By: Rob Halligan

Rob Halligan — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 21:03:25 +0000

My ATT rep tells me ATT Billing will bust me if I start using my SmartPhone/MediaNet in a Blackjack and start charging by the megabyte if I do. The only dif otherwise is $20 month. He's technically informed and has been straight up with me for years, but he could be wrong.

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 09:43:36 +0000

Oliver, while many would correctly accuse me of talking too much, my cellular service bills do include one family plan (two phones) and EVDO with one carrier plus one individual plan plus EDGE & Hotspot access with another carrier. I had a data card plan for $60 a month on top of all that, but I canceled that last year in favor of phone tethering.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:33:05 +0000

$2000/year? Maybe I am not talking enough, but I pay about $1200/year for my Treo 700p's voice/unlimited data plan plus my separate EVDO PC card unlimited usage plan. Are you including other family members?

By: William C Bonner

William C Bonner — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:13:13 +0000

I finally played with internet sharing from my DASH today after reading your post. I'm using a Fujitsu P7120 as my laptop, and it has bluetooth via the Toshiba Bluetooth stack.

I'm not happy with the Toshiba solution, but I don't think I really have a choice. I'm running Vista on this laptop.

What bluetooth stack are you using? to get the PAN from your laptop? Do you manually connect to the phone to bring up the connection, after you enable sharing from the phone?

I did all that and used bluetooth PAN to connect to the internet and got about 108k download speed and 20k upload speed at dslreports.com speed test. The main issue was that vista wouldn't reconnect to my local wifi after I turned off the phone and re enabled my local wifi. It kept complaining that the bluetooth pan had a disconnected cable. I rebooted vista (not something I do lightly because it seems to take ten minutes) and was able to connect on my wifi.

Wim.

By: Rodfather

Rodfather — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:05:00 +0000

It sucks. The trend is, if you get a data plan with your phone, you're only suppose to use it from your phone. No tethering.
If you want data on your computer, get a PC Card and shell out an additional $70/mo.

Just looks at AT&T's data plans. It's a huge mess.
There's a separate data plan for Smartphone's, PDA's, and Data cards. Of course, the cost is different for each type.
The weird thing is, the Blackjack requires the use of the PDA plan. Only the WM5 flipphones can use the Smartphone plan.
Guess what? Each data plan type functions exactly the same. So like if you buy a WM5 flipphone and use the Smartphone data plan, you can swap the SIM card out to a better phone and it would work exactly the same as if you bought the PDA plan.

I hate em all. Greedy bastids.

By: gonzalo

gonzalo — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:56:06 +0000

very true, cecessity is a good reason. my reasons are embarassing more than anything. i get suckered into extending my plan when they come out with the hot new phones, this time it was the dash. =(

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:34:32 +0000

Actually, I've only been a T-Mo customer since I got the Dash about 3 months ago. I've been a VZW customer for years. What keeps me staying with any of the carriers is: lack of choices and necessity of service for what I do.

By: gonzalo

gonzalo — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:31:41 +0000

i really dont like t-mobile but i've been with them for a long time. I assume you've been with them for a while also, what makes you stay with them as your cell carrier?