Leave Your Laptop at Home: iPhone Tethering Not Allowed
Tethering a cell phone to a laptop allows you to use your cell for wireless internet on the road. This could clearly be a very enticing usage of the new iPhone’s faster 3G speeds. Unfortunately, it appears that tethering won’t be allowed on the new iPhone 3G. So says iPhone Atlas’s article:
…according to AT&T spokesman, Mark A. Siegel, who spoke with iPhone Atlas earlier this week, AT&T will not be supporting a PAM plan for the iPhone 3G. The only available data plan for the iPhone will be the new $30 consumer unlimited data and visual voice mail plan and the $45 business data plan. The latter is charged when a person makes an enterprise type connection to Exchange or a Blackberry server for email or messaging.
So if you are an iPhone user, you will theoretically have to purchase a separate device with its own data plan to use on your laptop or other computer. Nonetheless, enterprising hackers developed (albeit complicated) methods for tethering the first-generation iPhone, and will likely produce similar options for the iPhone 3G.
Simple web browsing and email can of course be done on the iPhone itself, but more complicated internet tasks requiring a computer will not be aided by carrying around an iPhone.