Sprint says come on over and use our 4G data card with your iPad. Now I get that this is just Sprints way of trying to get in on a good thing with their newly introduced 4G Case for iPad. Clever! However, it reminds of one of the biggest broken promises of 2009.
Last year (June 18, 2009) AT&T told us that iPhone tethering (the ability to use your iPhone as a data connection for your laptop or in theory iPad) was "coming soon". By soon most of us assumed that meant by the end of the year. Well 2009 has come and gone and now it's the later part of April 2010 and official iPhone data tethering support is no where to be seen. To make matters worse or to give us more of a rub, Apple announced and is about to ship the iPad WiFi+3G model, which again runs data on AT&T's network!
So AT&T let me get this straight…
You can provide unlimited data to iPhones. You can provide tethering support to every other smart phone you make. You can provide 3G data cards for laptops to anyone that wants them. You can even bring a relatively low cost, contract free data plan to Apple's NEW iPad, but you can't provide tethering support for iPhones yet? I don't get it! No one is asking for FREE tethering support. So chances are you're going to charge for it and because you're going to charge for it, it means that not everyone is going to use it. Is your "improved" network still that fragile? Really?
I have no love or hatred for AT&T. For the most part my service has been fine and I travel all over. I just wonder what's really going on here?
I feel sorry for you guys who are stuck with data plans and providers which, on the whole, suck. Who’s the customer here? Give the providers a captive market and they don’t care.
We live in Spain and my partner has a Nokia 5800 which we can use as a browser, a tether for connecting computers and iPod Touch to the internet, a GPS, an MP3 player and, oh yes, as a phone. And we can do all that simultaneously – that’s multi-tasking. (The battery life on the phone is great, but we do carry a spare battery – just in case we need it. Another plus over the iPhone as far as we’re concerned.)
But here’s the best bit – we use a pre-pay Yoigo 3G SIM card. It costs us Euro 1.80 (USD$2.42) per day IF we use the phone to log-on to the internet. We don’t get charged for the days on which we don’t log-on, but there is a minimum charge of Euro 6.00 if we don’t use more than that in a month. Now that’s service and great pricing – and we’re not complaining!
The point I’m making is that a reasonably priced service is, and should be available in most countries. However, the phone providers in some countries have the monopoly, as well as their customers by the short and curlies, so they are charging extreme prices and getting away with it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/opinion/19mon1.html?hp
Check out NYT editorial on the FCC and why we the consumers are heading into unforgiving waters of monopolization.
Ken in KY
Ken: that goes hand-in-hand with the The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity Bill giving the President the control to shut down the internet or disconnect private companies.
Terry,
The buzz here is Sprints, one low price everything. Will I checked into it, the fine print say limited to 450 min on phone usage…..In he 1960’s we use to have a real FCC and true, truth in Advertising Companies. I watch the TV commercials of the CEO of Sprint make this misleading advertisement.
As Bob Dylan said in a song, There is a “slow train a coming”.
I am like you, I don’t mind paying a price for a service, but the jumble gumble, two talking, split tongue AD HEADS, have got to go. I know, I was once one of those too!
Grumbling in KY
Ken
I am an AT&T customer for almost 10 years (Bell South, Cingular and later AT&T) I saw in YouTube the presentation of the new HTC Evo 4G and really that phone Rocks. I have a family plan with AT&T , 550 minutes my wife and I have 2 Iphone 3gs and a PC card 5 G of internet service because I can’t use the tether on my Iphones. We pay $188,37 monthly. With Sprint I will pay a family plan 1500 minutes and all data, including Sprint TV, GPS , unlimited text and unlimited phone calls to cellulars, free calls after 7:00 pm and with this new phone I can get tethering up to 8 devices…You know what…Hasta la vista AT&T…
Alan
I forgot to write that the monthly payment in Sprint will be 129.99 plus taxes…around $
Alan150.00