The Galaxy S goes beyond tethering and has a Mobile AP feature which just turns the phone into a wifi access point that runs NAT in front of the 3g modem.
People I know who still have 'unlimited' data plans have used this for weeks to provide internet to their whole household in the absence of working cable.
I assume this feature is removed in the US carrier-modified firmware builds?
It's still there in the Sprint version (Epic 4G), but you have to pay Sprint for the privilege. Alternatively, there are various 3rd-party firmwares which provide Wifi tethering for free.
Ultimately these actions may drive free tethering a bit out of the mainstream, but no serious user is going to be deterred by removal from the Android market.
Oddly, I was able to tether for free on my Epic using the mobile hotspot app until Sprint pushed out the Froyo update about a month ago. Guess it's time to look into those 3rd party firmwares.
It is. Unfortunately the call center rep was clueless and meant 0.1 EUR, so 100 EUR/GB. Let me tell you, that was one frustrating discussion. I don't know why people are having such difficulties with decimals...
Yeah, I did that on Verizon one time when our DSL went out for a few days. I got a bill for $700 in overages. Sprint is better, it's about $30/mo. for unlimited (yes, actually unlimited) tethering.
T-Mobile is even better by giving you free tethering on any mobile data plan, and afaik they don't restrict Android firmwares to remove the tethering and wifi hotspot options. I've been using the tethering on my android phones for almost two years and never had to pay anything beyond the standard data plan.
You can tell when a cell phone provider is in desperate straits - they're forced to please customers, instead of screwing them out of every last penny.
I don't expect these policies to survive a merger with AT&T.
sadly, neither do I. T-Mobile was the only carrier in the US that actually operated like a European carrier. They had no problem selling you just a sim card, would charge you a lower monthly fee for buying your phone upfront and/or providing your own....
Nope, Verizon has a 5 GB limit, but I've had Sprint tethering for 6 months and they've never charged me an overage. But I'm not in a 4G market, maybe the rules are different there?
This isn't that new; PDANet has been blocked on AT&T in this manner for at least a year (from my experience having tried to download it when I first got an N1). Searching for it in the Market yielded nothing when an AT&T SIM was in the phone.
On my N1 the easy solution to the block was just to power down the phone, pull the SIM, then access the market over wifi. All those carrier blocked apps suddenly reappeared. I don't know if carrier locked phones still "remember" their carrier when you pull the SIM, though, and in any case I guess you're stuck with sideloading on those non-LTE Verizon devices where there's no SIM to remove.
Putting the phone in airplane mode and turning on Wifi mode also effects the same behavior on many Android phones from AT&T. This would probably work for your Nexus, too.
Another possible work-around is Amazon's App store. That's where I purchased EasyTeather Pro. Are the carriers/Google going to force all App stores to bend to their whims?
AT&T's app sideloading ban makes Amazon's app store moot at present, and it certainly puts AT&T in a bargaining position to request Amazon implement these carrier specific blocks too if Amazon wants access to all these AT&T devices.
Tethering is built into Android from Version 2.3 (or even 2.3), no marketplace apps needed.
Anyway, I don't understand what Google is supposed to do if carriers choose to disable it. Maybe customers should be looking into other carriers if they don't like the way their carriers conduct business.
It was there in "stock" 2.2 as well, on the Nexus One --- but disabled in almost all carrier builds.
And Google does have some leverage, if they choose to use it, in the Market compatibility requirements --- there are minimum requirements for both hardware and software if you want to get the Market, or Google's other proprietary apps. (Which, say, the Nook Color flunks --- no camera.) It might be a bridge too far for some of the carriers, but from the outside, it's not obvious that they're trying.
(And looking for other carriers is not a hugely practical option in an environment where there are basically four, and the one with the most generally consumer-friendly policies, T-mobile, is up for buyout by the one with the least, AT&T, which is the only one to ban sideloading altogether.)
Not sure if access to the market is much of a leverage. I think most players in the mobile game seek to establish their own markets anyway. The phone makers certainly do.
There are no carriers in the US that don't play these games. Sprint is a little better about not limiting the stuff they label as Unlimited, but they still charge for tethering, have absurd overage fees if you're not on an unlimited plan, and still have Sprint/OEM specific Android builds.
I haven't had any charges on T-Mobile as of yet. That being said I've only used the hotspot and tethering a handful of times so I may not have hit some unforeseen limit.
Tethering on T-Mobile is free. I don't have cable/DSL at home. Rather, I tether through my T-Mobile cell phone exclusively. Word on the street (T-Mobile forums) is that there is a 5 GB soft cap on data. Once you hit it, you are dropped to Edge speeds.
Last month I went over 5 GB for the first time (5.5 GB) but speeds were not dropped.
The real reason is that for years they have overcharged corporate customers for tethering plans and they don't want to lose that revenue. Same reason why sms is so expensive per GB, basically because they can.
Actually while SMS messages are overcharged for, especially messages that pass between international boundaries, on pre 3G networks they are far more of a burden on the network than you would imagine which means the networks have a vested interesting in keeps the numbers being sent down a little. See http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/sms_denialofse... for some details on a theoretical DoS attack based on this limitation. While I believe this has been addressed with newer transmission protocols like UMTS there are still a lot of phones out there using the 2G infrastructure either because the phone is old or because they are being used in an area that has no good 3G availability.
Thanks for the details but I think it backs up my contention, as the networks are all upgraded the companies are trying to maintain the old sms prices without technical justification.
I'm not disagreeing with you as such (SMS pricing is definitely OTT, especially cross-border given that the transmission between countries and providers is not limited by the 2G per-cell control channel bandwidth), but they currently have account for the fact that a chunk of their subscribers will be sending via the older (limited throughput) method rather than the newer one(s). My phone is capable of everything that is commonly "out there", but right now it is playing at being a 2G handset as the 3G signal is lousy out here.
Combination of two factors. A) the obvious one, that they are overselling their network capacity; and B) that given A, it is much better to reclaim bandwidth by fucking over the 0.1% of tetherers by discriminating against them at the margin than it is to fuck over 100% of normal users by throttling/changing pricing plans/etc.
The carriers have put themselves into a corner where they have to make someone unhappy. All customers are paying the same $30/mo. Given the choice what would you rather do, make 10 of them unhappy or 1000 of them? Subscriber volume is your lifeblood, it's a numbers game.
Oh man, imagine the consumer confusion if they tried to tier data prices by how crowded your area is. So, someone in the middle of nowhere gets cheap data, but someone in a crowded area does not. Now in addition to voice roaming, we'd have to worry about data roaming as we move around between city, suburbs, and rural areas.
It would be great to have the networks offer service to devices in small units of time, and have the phone decide which plan on offer to go with automatically based on the user's preferences, then we could have an efficient market for this resource. But entrenched companies seldom like playing in an well functioning market when they can be rent collectors instead.
Why is this even a surprise? Why is everyone saying it's an open vs close issue? The TOS clearly states that apps that utilize high bandwidth is a violation. Google hasn't enforced this strongly but it is against their TOS. It's the same as in Google banning porn-related material. This is not anything special.
Of course Gruber jumps on the course saying it's against their open nature, but please, at least most users (besides some AT&T handsets) can still go and just install the app from a website.
Which TOS are you referring to? The Android Marketplace TOS? Could you please point to the section of the TOS that mentions this? I find it very strange that the marketplace would be concerned about an application's bandwidth usage.
(f) is deemed by Google to have a virus or is deemed to be malware, spyware or have an adverse impact on Google's or an Authorized Carrier's network;
Using the network's bandwidth to tether (since you didn't pay extra for it or is not authorized to) is deemed as having an adverse impact on the carrier's network.
With any luck, Google has negotiated for something in return that will benefit end-users. Namely, that these carriers (ahem... Verizon) will agree to always offer the latest pure Google experience device.
Most likely, Google has negotiated something that advances better/broader net access over the long-term - as this would also align with their own business interests. It's difficult to believe that threats alone could have forced Google's hand.
As far as tethering goes, this seems to be exactly what the spectrum auction reserve price was designed to protect. Second, tethering apps can still be installed, just not via market. While this may be a minor inconvenience, I'm not all that concerned. Big picture/long-term, ubiquitous network access will be critical enough to the global economy, individual health and national security that it will no longer make sense to keep in the hands of private corporate interests within the current regulatory structure.
I'm not sure this matters much. To use one of these apps you have to root your phone. Anyone who knows to do that knows you can sideload apks.
Average consumers, who don't have the slightest clue what rooting is or why they'd want to do it, just use the tethering app installed by the carrier, or nothing at all.
this isnt exactly true. I just purchased the Optimus V for use on virgin mobile and all I need to download from the market was an app called quick settings. I was than able to tether w/o even needing to be rooted
I don't think there is any evidence that Google would not have paid up if they had won with their low bid, they just had no intention of winning the auction. They were confidant someone would pay more. Is that illegal in financial markets?
Price discrimination. Some people are willing to pay more while others aren't. If you can find a way to charge extra to those that will pay more, or less to those that can't afford it at the higher price, without letting people jump between tariffs to make a mockery of your scheme then you can increase your total profit and better serve your customer base. You can use the same system to more efficiently gouge a captive audience as well though.
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the networks don't have the capacity to handle as much as they say they do. Add on to that that someone on a laptop is probably going to eat up more data. Multitasking is easier (I generally only look at one page at a time on my phone, but I might have five tabs loading on my laptop at any given time), and there are more applications available that can chew through a connection (MMOs, torrenting, etc).
People use bandwidth differently depending on how they access it. Carriers design their networks and plans around the use patterns associated with particular access methods. Tethering is a difference access method, with different usage patterns, and so may not fit in well with a particular carrier's system.
I don't know where it's coming from, but I can no longer get the market to install a couple tethering apps that I once could (US, Verizon, original Droid).
I'm rooted, so it doesn't matter, but this is definitely happening.
In fact, something most forget about android, you don't even need to be rooted to still install the applications, just download them from the companies website and you can install on your own. Unless you're on AT&T, who disabled that choice on their phones.
I wrote one of the (non-root, virtual network-adapter based) apps like PdaNet, and I can say that a number of people on VZW have reported this. I wonder what would happen if my app were one day open-sourced so that anyone could publish an apk to the market in 15 minutes...
Well, I'd like to quote a comment from the original posting. "If you remove one branch from a tree, doesn't change the fact that it's still a tree."
This cannot in any way dwarf the magnitudes of contributions they have made to the open source world.
OT, but that raises an interesting question. Could you have an open source god? What would a religion be like if its holy texts were a wiki, that any believer could edit?
Seriously, I think the Jews invented the wiki: consider the form and structure of the rabbinical commentary on their holy texts, very wiki-like in form and purpose. Of course ordinary believers couldn't "edit" it...
Not trying to be rude, these are merely the most obvious cases that mold themselves to the believer's opinion. Also, observe the syncretism of Buddhism in different regions.
People I know who still have 'unlimited' data plans have used this for weeks to provide internet to their whole household in the absence of working cable.
I assume this feature is removed in the US carrier-modified firmware builds?