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Rogers Reassessing Smartphone Tethering

Categories: Mobile Broadband, Rogers
By: , IntoMobile
Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 8:12 AM

rogers-tetherball

Anyone on Rogers who has been enjoying free tethering with a data plan 1 GB or over may be in for a rude shock come May 3rd. Apparently Rogers is “examining options that are in line with how customers use tethering on their devices”, so don’t be surprised if all of a sudden you’ll need to pay out another $15-$30 for the luxury of mobile internet access via smartphone. All the carriers have a wide variety of internet sticks that are purpose-built for mobile broadband, and (more importantly) have separate plans. While it’s awfully convenient for end-users to be able to use the same plan for both regular smartphone data and mobile internet for a laptop or netbook, Rogers stands to make more by either pinging occasional users for an extra fee on their cellular bill, or push an additional plan, device, and contract for heavy-duty users. If either of these added charges turns off subscribers from tethering at all, Rogers benefits from fewer data junkies clogging up their network – win-win-win. In these instances, applications like Tether provide a viable (if sneaky) workaround for those who still want some mobile internet and have a desire to stick it to The Man.

[via Globe and Mail]

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About The Author

Simon Sage

Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement. With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out.

  • Nick Doucet

    You mention Tether but not Joikuspot? Tether does use USB, but Joikuspot is wireless and does pretty much the same thing for Symbian users. WMwifiRouter is another one for Windows Mobile.

  • Ahmed Eltawil

    What if you have only a 500MB BlackBerry plan? Does this still apply? You mentioned only 1GB or more.

  • Simon Sage

    Good call, Nick. I only really use BlackBerry full-time, so never had a chance to see what solutions exist for Symbian or WinMo.

  • Simon Sage

    Pretty sure you can’t tether with only 500 MB right now, but might be wrong. Feel free to try it and tell me if you get charged by the KB. ;)

  • Mat

    Is it just me or has tethering already been taken out of my Rogers iPhone ???

    Big suprise … just when we thought that would be the one thing Rogers would do better then the rest, they remind us that they are a bunch of gready @#&?$(*@