Telstra Will Have WP7 Tethering By Year’s End


Good news everybody! Well, everybody on Telstra’s Windows Phone 7 devices anyway; you’ll be getting Internet Tethering by year’s end. In best Professor Farnsworth fashion, however, there’s a sting in the tail; it looks like you’ll never get Visual Voicemail.

Sheeds over at WPDownUnder chased Telstra over the issue of whether specific Windows Phone 7 Mango features would be offered by the carrier — specifically Internet Tethering, Visual Voicemail and Group Text. First, the good news, direct from Telstra:

Wi-Fi sharing
The Wi-Fi sharing functionality is currently supported by the Mango version of Windows Phone but requires the manufacturer to make some changes in their part of the phone software to work. To simplify the release of Mango Microsoft did not include these updates in the initial release. Currently HTC and LG are in the process of submitting new software to us that will enable this feature. We hope to have it available to customers in December.

Group text
The feature is supported by the Telstra network but is switched off by default to protect customers from inadvertently sending a lot of MMS. It can be switched on by heading to the messaging tile and selecting ->settings->group text on your handset.

And then the bad news:

Visual voicemail
We have no current plans to introduce visual voicemail on Windows Phone. Unfortunately it requires more development work and investment than simply flicking a switch. We will consider it in the future.

(Thanks to Sheeds for the tip!) [Telstra CrowdSupport via WPDownUnder]


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