Bet you thought you were pretty slick there, using a tethering app to turn your Android phone into a mobile hotspot while sidestepping the additional carrier charges. What, you thought your carrier wouldn’t notice? Well, you’re not, they did, and now the free-mobile-hotspot party is over.
So far, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have all banned access the these apps in their marketplaces. Sprint still allows it but not likely for much longer. [via Engadget]
Peter
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 9:42 AMI get this is US based, so this means carriers have tinkered with the ROM to remove Froyo+ to do it natively or at least throw up a warning gateway? Sucks to deal with US carriers.
TSH
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 10:00 AMWhat’s the big deal anyway? Data is data – whether you use it through the phone browser or via tethering, the cap is still in effect.
…unless US carriers have been spoiling their customers with unlimited data plans. tsk tsk. Optus learned the perils of this the hard way when they included YouTube in their “free social networks” caps. :–D
Steve
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 9:08 PMThat makes too much sense. Besides, if the carriers can get away with it (as they obviously are here), then they’ll continue to do it.
Most Australian Telcos don’t mind, precisely because our data caps are quite low (mostly <2 GBs/month). As was mentioned, many NA Telcos have unlimited data plans. This + a laptop = basically free internet everywhere you go.
Ogre
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 10:05 AMDoesn’t every Android phone have a setting in the OS settings menu to turn on WiFi hotspot mode? And a settings widget that does the same thing? I don’t understand why you need an app to do this.
Greg
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 12:50 PMIt is often disabled/unavailable on phones sold by US carriers.
Ollie
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 10:18 AMStupid Americanos with their unlimited data plans is why. That’s why Telstra et al don’t care about it, because we pay for our data here, so they’re happy for us to use as much as possible.
Tommy
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 8:16 PMNo, not with some of the ROM and kernel doesnt support, like original crappy Sony Ericsson ROM and Kernel doesnt
ozoneocean
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 3:36 PMReplace the crap crippled Telco Rom with a nice custom Rom and problem solved?
Bryce Fraser
Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 1:39 PMJust wondering if install an rom such as Cyanogen would be a way around this silly ban by US telcos?
I don’t use it personally (as mentioned previously, the data plans in AUS are pretty bad).