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One of the few distinctive differences of Verizon’s iPhone 4 which was announced yesterday is that unlike AT&T, it includes a Personal Hotspot to turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hub and share your wireless internet with up to 5 devices. AT&T iPhone 4 owners may be making puppy-dog eyes over not getting the feature, but don’t worry – rumour has it that a global iOS update due to land in March will bring the Personal Hotspot feature beyond just the Verizon iPhone.
An iPhone hotspot will be a nice additional feature, but even once Apple’s done cooking up the software, what carriers do with it may be a huge bottleneck. AT&T, for example, only provided iPhone tethering this summer after promising it over a year earlier. Part of the delay may rely on getting the pricing infrastructure in place, or in AT&T’s case, building out their network so they can handle the added load a mobile hotspot feature would add, but now that Verizon is offering a viable alternative, you’d think their network congestion would lessen. That being said, the longer Verizon is the only one with personal hotspot on the iPhone 4, the more AT&T is bound to bleed customers (not that they needed any more reasons).
As Will continually points out, there have been third-party Wi-Fi hotspot solutions available for awhile, if it’s a feature you’re really gung-ho about using and don’t feel like waiting for something official.
[via BGR]
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.
