Comments on: Sprint Exec: No Tethering, Now or Ever

By: Jus

Jus — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:33:53 +0000

I have the touch pro 2 and i still tether.. once a device is in my hands..i can help it do anything. sprint can suck it

By: Curtis Carmack

Curtis Carmack — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:41:45 +0000

It will be interesting to see how many folks move to the Sprint Relay plans that provide unlimited messaging and allow tethering up to 5 GB, all for $30/mo. Voice minutes at $0.20 is painful, but if you use Google Voice and an VoIP client, it wouldn’t matter. Or you could even get a cheap cell phone separately with only voice minutes.

By: Mark Holle

Mark Holle — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:30:35 +0000

No tethering, No Sprint, now or ever.

As a consultant who constantly moves to client offices on a day to day basis, I need to access the internet on my laptop. For $15 a month, Verizon lets me do that with my Blackberry Storm. If Sprint wants to start taking market share from the Big 2, they better start adding features so they can compete.

By: Tristan

Tristan — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:15:30 +0000

I completely agree with the “data is data and I should be able to consume it however I want” argument. However, one of the larger problems is that with a very limited number of major carriers in the US, said carriers can all push up prices and instill additional charges within a small amount of time of each other, and we (the customers) have no choice but to go along with it. I believe it’s been proven time and again that customer service isn’t exactly any major carrier’s forte, and the tethering thing is a big way of showing that.

I jumped on a Palm Pre very early on, as I liked the potential openness of it’s operating system. I also got into the “homebrew” thing very early as well. Fortunately I was able to disable updates and essentially lock my phone at WebOS version 1.1 while having a homebrew app called MyTether that gives me USB and WiFi tethering capabilities. As a result, I’m with Sprint and Palm until the phone breaks as I can’t duplicate this functionality with anything else at the moment. When something does happen to the phone, I’ll only be shopping for something that either has tethering, or is easy enough for me to hack/code an app for.

By: Nameless

Nameless — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:45:24 +0000

Well, that’s sad. Guess they won’t be getting my business once I’m in the position to pay for my own plan and get Internet everywhere.

The cell phone carriers just wouldn’t get it with me. I don’t see them as selling telephone service-I see them as selling wireless Internet connections, competing with Comcast and the like. There’s no point in paying extra for voice minutes or anything like that when those are just other forms of data that can be carried over an Internet connection. (VoIP, anyone?)

By: Luscious

Luscious — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:49:53 +0000

Back in the day TMO would charge me $20/month extra for a EVDO data plan that was unlimited (no caps), and I was free to use the device any way I wanted to, including tethering. That was on top of a $30/month voice plan I had – pretty good value considering all the functionality I got.

But if I were to pay $100/month, as Sprint charges for it’s “uber service”, I would expect to see tethering as standard software on the phone and working. It makes absolutely no difference if I look up a website on the smartphone or feed that data to a netbook/notebook – data is data. The practice these days of service providers raping their customers to get functionality that for years has been considered standard goes to show exactly that these companies have no interest in serving the needs of customers but EVERY INTEREST when it comes to taking their money.

Instead of being greedy, service providers should reconsider their joint conspiracy against the consumer and just provide honest service. Get rid of the 5GB caps, let me use the device the way I want and stop charging extra for standard features. Maybe then they will earn more subscribers and more respect.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:29:48 +0000

That’s too bad for them. I was >< this close to jumping from AT&T to Sprint for a Palm Pre, if tethering would have been an option.

Now, I guess I'll wait for AT&T to get an Android phone.

By: cherkazo

cherkazo — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:42:07 +0000

Isn’t the opposite also true?
Adding is also easy by the consumers.

By: SAM

SAM — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:40:45 +0000

We have a Verizon phone that has “Unlimited Data”
===5GBs a month===

Didn’t know that unlimited means 5GBs {sarcasm}

I think they should come out and say for $xxx you get xxxGB of data
per month or pay for a larger GB limit…

They charge us $40 per month for tethering.
Same amount of GBs allowed for browsing from phone only for $40 less.

I don’t think it should be extra to hook up your laptop, you have a monthly limit no matter how it is used.

By: bj

bj — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:27:35 +0000

At some point they will “get it”… especially with Android phones and realize they are in the data moving business. If I pay for X Gb of data then just just let me move X Gb, irregardless of exactly how I generate or consume it. The data looks the same if I am browsing on a tethered netbook or on my Android phone directly.

You cannot build a secure, affordable, and useful device that can not be compromised if you give up physical possession of it… and given that phone have to be give to the end users, they will be hacked. It just comes down to how annoying the carriers choose to be about this reality.

Accepting this and figuring out how to turn it into a value add is the real challenge. Will be interesting to see you Verizon does with the Android rollout, give their past history of rather restrictive practices.