UK: I’ve got Tethering

Tethering sounds like a nasty affliction, doesn’t it…..

So after somewhat of a kerfuffle, I got Internet Tethering setup for my iPhone 3GS today. I say kerfuffle, because I didn’t get any notification (of any kind) that it was working – oh no, hang on, they sent it to the wrong email address, that’s it

Anyhoo, I’m looking forward to giving the iPhone a chance to stretch it’s data-legs over the next couple of months, and see how it performs compared to one of O2 (NYSE: TEF)’s plug-in USB dongles. Speaking of the USB dongles, the iPhone tethering weighs in the same cost, with a pretty much identical tariff – that is:

• 3GB data per month
• £15 per month (£14.88 to be exact)
• 30-day rolling bolt-on (for the first month, then I believe you can cancel at any point during a month)

However, just trying it out briefly earlier, I’m noticing the iPhone is taking longer to make a data connection that one of the USB dongles does do, plus it’s throughput appears to be a bit slower also. Now that could of course be the prevailing network conditions this evening, but I’ll be keeping an eye out over the next few months to see if an iPhone does actually perform as well as a dedicated dongle.

Anyone out there with existing experience care to share a view?