7 ms·

Google plays ball with carriers to kill tethering apps

98 points by msravi 15y ago

JonnieCache 15y ago
The Galaxy S goes beyond tethering and has a Mobile AP feature which just turns the phone into a wifi access point that runs NAT in front of the 3g modem. People I know who still have 'unlimited' data plans have used this for weeks to provide internet to their whole household in the absence of working cable. I assume this feature is removed in the US carrier-modified firmware builds?
- necubi 15y ago
  It's still there in the Sprint version (Epic 4G), but you have to pay Sprint for the privilege. Alternatively, there are various 3rd-party firmwares which provide Wifi tethering for free. Ultimately these actions may drive free tethering a bit out of the mainstream, but no serious user is going to be deterred by removal from the Android market.
  - bhousel 15y ago
    Oddly, I was able to tether for free on my Epic using the mobile hotspot app until Sprint pushed out the Froyo update about a month ago. Guess it's time to look into those 3rd party firmwares.
- StavrosK 15y ago
  My Desire HD does that as well, as do most (all?) other Android mobiles I've seen in Greece. However, we don't have unlimited data plans, we only have ones that cost 0.10 cents (yes, cents, apparently) per megabyte for overage.
  - seabee 15y ago
    €1 per gigabyte is pretty reasonable as overage charges go...
    - StavrosK 15y ago
      It is. Unfortunately the call center rep was clueless and meant 0.1 EUR, so 100 EUR/GB. Let me tell you, that was one frustrating discussion. I don't know why people are having such difficulties with decimals...
    - shrikant 15y ago
      Only for reasonably numerate folks. See http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-... for a related horror story (Verizon and USA, but the basic point holds - you should understand what they really mean, and logic/reason holds no relevance!)
      - StavrosK 15y ago
        Tell me about it. My conversation was: "Hello, could you tell me how much overage costs per MB?" "The rates are very low, 0.10 eurocents." "0.10 eurocents? Are you sure it's not 0.10 euros?" "No, it's 0.10 eurocents." "So 10 MB is one cent?" "No, one euro." "So it is 0.10 euro." "No, 0.10 cents. Let's say 0.1 cents, for convenience." "Okay, if it's 0.1 cents per MB, so 10 MB is 1 cent." "No, 1 euro." "But how can this be? 1 cent is already 0.01 euro, so 0.1 cents is 0.001 euro." "Look, the rate is 0.10 eurocents. If you can't understand this, 10 MB is 1 euro." "Okay, thanks. click"
- sp332 15y ago
  Yeah, I did that on Verizon one time when our DSL went out for a few days. I got a bill for $700 in overages. Sprint is better, it's about $30/mo. for unlimited (yes, actually unlimited) tethering.
  - nuclear_eclipse 15y ago
    T-Mobile is even better by giving you free tethering on any mobile data plan, and afaik they don't restrict Android firmwares to remove the tethering and wifi hotspot options. I've been using the tethering on my android phones for almost two years and never had to pay anything beyond the standard data plan.
    - gamble 15y ago
      You can tell when a cell phone provider is in desperate straits - they're forced to please customers, instead of screwing them out of every last penny. I don't expect these policies to survive a merger with AT&T.
      - nuclear_eclipse 15y ago
        sadly, neither do I. T-Mobile was the only carrier in the US that actually operated like a European carrier. They had no problem selling you just a sim card, would charge you a lower monthly fee for buying your phone upfront and/or providing your own....
  - abraham 15y ago
    Last I checked Sprint 3G had a 5GB/m limit while 4G is actually unlimited.
    - sp332 15y ago
      Nope, Verizon has a 5 GB limit, but I've had Sprint tethering for 6 months and they've never charged me an overage. But I'm not in a 4G market, maybe the rules are different there?
- hammock 15y ago
  You say that like it's a bad thing.
- technomancy 15y ago
  Yet another reason you have to be crazy to buy a phone with carrier firmware.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
muro 15y ago
is there a source for the claim?
- michaelcampbell 15y ago
  I don't know where it's coming from, but I can no longer get the market to install a couple tethering apps that I once could (US, Verizon, original Droid). I'm rooted, so it doesn't matter, but this is definitely happening.
  - nightpool 15y ago
    In fact, something most forget about android, you don't even need to be rooted to still install the applications, just download them from the companies website and you can install on your own. Unless you're on AT&T, who disabled that choice on their phones.
    - michaelcampbell 15y ago
      That's true, but this article is specifically about the Android market limiting access, and I was reporting my experience with it.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
- kevko 15y ago
  I wrote one of the (non-root, virtual network-adapter based) apps like PdaNet, and I can say that a number of people on VZW have reported this. I wonder what would happen if my app were one day open-sourced so that anyone could publish an apk to the market in 15 minutes...
napierzaza 15y ago
Looks like Google is becoming more and more closed as the day goes on. Where is your open-source god now?
- rrrazdan 15y ago
  Well, I'd like to quote a comment from the original posting. "If you remove one branch from a tree, doesn't change the fact that it's still a tree." This cannot in any way dwarf the magnitudes of contributions they have made to the open source world.
- tzs 15y ago
  > Where is your open-source god now? OT, but that raises an interesting question. Could you have an open source god? What would a religion be like if its holy texts were a wiki, that any believer could edit?
  - msg 15y ago
    New Age? Unitarian Universalist? Not trying to be rude, these are merely the most obvious cases that mold themselves to the believer's opinion. Also, observe the syncretism of Buddhism in different regions.
  - bitwize 15y ago
    Probably Judaism. Seriously, I think the Jews invented the wiki: consider the form and structure of the rabbinical commentary on their holy texts, very wiki-like in form and purpose. Of course ordinary believers couldn't "edit" it...
  - Someone 15y ago
    Lots of forks, as in Protestant churches (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Gereformeerd.svg http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Gereformeerd.svg really starts to look like a history of Unix) Of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonite_Church_in_the_Netherlands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonite_Church_in_the_Netherl... probably would be popular; every church member writes his own confession when joining the church.
Tichy 15y ago
Tethering is built into Android from Version 2.3 (or even 2.3), no marketplace apps needed. Anyway, I don't understand what Google is supposed to do if carriers choose to disable it. Maybe customers should be looking into other carriers if they don't like the way their carriers conduct business.
- bane 15y ago
  Any US carriers with good national coverage you can recommend?
- michaelcampbell 15y ago
  This is all true, but completely orthogonal to the story.
- rst 15y ago
  It was there in "stock" 2.2 as well, on the Nexus One --- but disabled in almost all carrier builds. And Google does have some leverage, if they choose to use it, in the Market compatibility requirements --- there are minimum requirements for both hardware and software if you want to get the Market, or Google's other proprietary apps. (Which, say, the Nook Color flunks --- no camera.) It might be a bridge too far for some of the carriers, but from the outside, it's not obvious that they're trying. (And looking for other carriers is not a hugely practical option in an environment where there are basically four, and the one with the most generally consumer-friendly policies, T-mobile, is up for buyout by the one with the least, AT&T, which is the only one to ban sideloading altogether.)
  - Tichy 15y ago
    Not sure if access to the market is much of a leverage. I think most players in the mobile game seek to establish their own markets anyway. The phone makers certainly do.
- evilduck 15y ago
  There are no carriers in the US that don't play these games. Sprint is a little better about not limiting the stuff they label as Unlimited, but they still charge for tethering, have absurd overage fees if you're not on an unlimited plan, and still have Sprint/OEM specific Android builds.
gaius 15y ago
Isn't bidding without intention to actually complete the deal market abuse? It certainly is in financial markets. As in, jail time.
- macrael 15y ago
  I don't think there is any evidence that Google would not have paid up if they had won with their low bid, they just had no intention of winning the auction. They were confidant someone would pay more. Is that illegal in financial markets?
reader5000 15y ago
Why do carriers care if I'm accessing my paid-for data via the phone's interface or a tethered computer? It makes no sense to me.
- justincormack 15y ago
  Because they havent got nearly as much capacity as they sell.
  - michaelcampbell 15y ago
    I think that's secondary to them not wanting you to do something for free that they would like to be charging you to do.
- hammock 15y ago
  Combination of two factors. A) the obvious one, that they are overselling their network capacity; and B) that given A, it is much better to reclaim bandwidth by fucking over the 0.1% of tetherers by discriminating against them at the margin than it is to fuck over 100% of normal users by throttling/changing pricing plans/etc. The carriers have put themselves into a corner where they have to make someone unhappy. All customers are paying the same $30/mo. Given the choice what would you rather do, make 10 of them unhappy or 1000 of them? Subscriber volume is your lifeblood, it's a numbers game.
  - TillE 15y ago
    > they are overselling their network capacity Seriously? Two lousy gigabytes a month is "overselling"? That's, say, three hours at 200KB/s. Per month. I find that difficult to believe, except in the very most crowded areas.
    - tzs 15y ago
      Oh man, imagine the consumer confusion if they tried to tier data prices by how crowded your area is. So, someone in the middle of nowhere gets cheap data, but someone in a crowded area does not. Now in addition to voice roaming, we'd have to worry about data roaming as we move around between city, suburbs, and rural areas.
RexRollman 15y ago
Can someone explain why the carriers even care? Bandwidth is bandwidth; isn't it?
- ctoneal 15y ago
  I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the networks don't have the capacity to handle as much as they say they do. Add on to that that someone on a laptop is probably going to eat up more data. Multitasking is easier (I generally only look at one page at a time on my phone, but I might have five tabs loading on my laptop at any given time), and there are more applications available that can chew through a connection (MMOs, torrenting, etc).
- ZeroGravitas 15y ago
  Price discrimination. Some people are willing to pay more while others aren't. If you can find a way to charge extra to those that will pay more, or less to those that can't afford it at the higher price, without letting people jump between tariffs to make a mockery of your scheme then you can increase your total profit and better serve your customer base. You can use the same system to more efficiently gouge a captive audience as well though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
- tzs 15y ago
  People use bandwidth differently depending on how they access it. Carriers design their networks and plans around the use patterns associated with particular access methods. Tethering is a difference access method, with different usage patterns, and so may not fit in well with a particular carrier's system.
beamso 15y ago
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1416#c150 http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1416#c150 states that Bluetooth PAN is in Honeycomb. Since Android 2.2 I've been able to use my Google Nexus One as a WiFi hotspot so that my laptops can use it's data connection.
yanw 15y ago
The carries hold all the cards really, and their power is only to get bigger and more consolidated.
ben1040 15y ago
This isn't that new; PDANet has been blocked on AT&T in this manner for at least a year (from my experience having tried to download it when I first got an N1). Searching for it in the Market yielded nothing when an AT&T SIM was in the phone. On my N1 the easy solution to the block was just to power down the phone, pull the SIM, then access the market over wifi. All those carrier blocked apps suddenly reappeared. I don't know if carrier locked phones still "remember" their carrier when you pull the SIM, though, and in any case I guess you're stuck with sideloading on those non-LTE Verizon devices where there's no SIM to remove.
- kevko 15y ago
  Putting the phone in airplane mode and turning on Wifi mode also effects the same behavior on many Android phones from AT&T. This would probably work for your Nexus, too.
- neuroelectronic 15y ago
  Another possible work-around is Amazon's App store. That's where I purchased EasyTeather Pro. Are the carriers/Google going to force all App stores to bend to their whims?
  - ben1040 15y ago
    AT&T's app sideloading ban makes Amazon's app store moot at present, and it certainly puts AT&T in a bargaining position to request Amazon implement these carrier specific blocks too if Amazon wants access to all these AT&T devices.
hnsmurf 15y ago
I'm not sure this matters much. To use one of these apps you have to root your phone. Anyone who knows to do that knows you can sideload apks. Average consumers, who don't have the slightest clue what rooting is or why they'd want to do it, just use the tethering app installed by the carrier, or nothing at all.
- broknbottle 15y ago
  this isnt exactly true. I just purchased the Optimus V for use on virgin mobile and all I need to download from the market was an app called quick settings. I was than able to tether w/o even needing to be rooted
  - hnsmurf 15y ago
    How is that possible? Was it USB tethering or something?
arron61 15y ago
Why is this even a surprise? Why is everyone saying it's an open vs close issue? The TOS clearly states that apps that utilize high bandwidth is a violation. Google hasn't enforced this strongly but it is against their TOS. It's the same as in Google banning porn-related material. This is not anything special. Of course Gruber jumps on the course saying it's against their open nature, but please, at least most users (besides some AT&T handsets) can still go and just install the app from a website.
- msravi 15y ago
  Which TOS are you referring to? The Android Marketplace TOS? Could you please point to the section of the TOS that mentions this? I find it very strange that the marketplace would be concerned about an application's bandwidth usage.
  - arron61 15y ago
    (f) is deemed by Google to have a virus or is deemed to be malware, spyware or have an adverse impact on Google's or an Authorized Carrier's network; Using the network's bandwidth to tether (since you didn't pay extra for it or is not authorized to) is deemed as having an adverse impact on the carrier's network.
jsight 15y ago
This is actually really old news. This story on it is from 2 years ago: http://androidcommunity.com/android-tethering-apps-pulled-from-market-20090331/ http://androidcommunity.com/android-tethering-apps-pulled-fr...
joelhaus 15y ago
With any luck, Google has negotiated for something in return that will benefit end-users. Namely, that these carriers (ahem... Verizon) will agree to always offer the latest pure Google experience device. Most likely, Google has negotiated something that advances better/broader net access over the long-term - as this would also align with their own business interests. It's difficult to believe that threats alone could have forced Google's hand. As far as tethering goes, this seems to be exactly what the spectrum auction reserve price was designed to protect. Second, tethering apps can still be installed, just not via market. While this may be a minor inconvenience, I'm not all that concerned. Big picture/long-term, ubiquitous network access will be critical enough to the global economy, individual health and national security that it will no longer make sense to keep in the hands of private corporate interests within the current regulatory structure.
texas-saluki 15y ago
I think it is one thing for AT&T to not want to allow these apps but when Google blocks them based that I am on one network vs another is a problem. In my case I have a N1 so not an issue as of now, but in the future rooting is the way to go...unless it is eliminated from the ASOP code.

98 points by msravi 15y ago

The Galaxy S goes beyond tethering and has a Mobile AP feature which just turns the phone into a wifi access point that runs NAT in front of the 3g modem. People I know who still have 'unlimited' data plans have used this for weeks to provide internet to their whole household in the absence of working cable. I assume this feature is removed in the US carrier-modified firmware builds?

necubi 15y ago
It's still there in the Sprint version (Epic 4G), but you have to pay Sprint for the privilege. Alternatively, there are various 3rd-party firmwares which provide Wifi tethering for free. Ultimately these actions may drive free tethering a bit out of the mainstream, but no serious user is going to be deterred by removal from the Android market.
- bhousel 15y ago
  Oddly, I was able to tether for free on my Epic using the mobile hotspot app until Sprint pushed out the Froyo update about a month ago. Guess it's time to look into those 3rd party firmwares.
StavrosK 15y ago
My Desire HD does that as well, as do most (all?) other Android mobiles I've seen in Greece. However, we don't have unlimited data plans, we only have ones that cost 0.10 cents (yes, cents, apparently) per megabyte for overage.
- seabee 15y ago
  €1 per gigabyte is pretty reasonable as overage charges go...
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    It is. Unfortunately the call center rep was clueless and meant 0.1 EUR, so 100 EUR/GB. Let me tell you, that was one frustrating discussion. I don't know why people are having such difficulties with decimals...
  - shrikant 15y ago
    Only for reasonably numerate folks. See http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-... for a related horror story (Verizon and USA, but the basic point holds - you should understand what they really mean, and logic/reason holds no relevance!)
    - StavrosK 15y ago
      Tell me about it. My conversation was: "Hello, could you tell me how much overage costs per MB?" "The rates are very low, 0.10 eurocents." "0.10 eurocents? Are you sure it's not 0.10 euros?" "No, it's 0.10 eurocents." "So 10 MB is one cent?" "No, one euro." "So it is 0.10 euro." "No, 0.10 cents. Let's say 0.1 cents, for convenience." "Okay, if it's 0.1 cents per MB, so 10 MB is 1 cent." "No, 1 euro." "But how can this be? 1 cent is already 0.01 euro, so 0.1 cents is 0.001 euro." "Look, the rate is 0.10 eurocents. If you can't understand this, 10 MB is 1 euro." "Okay, thanks. click"
sp332 15y ago
Yeah, I did that on Verizon one time when our DSL went out for a few days. I got a bill for $700 in overages. Sprint is better, it's about $30/mo. for unlimited (yes, actually unlimited) tethering.
- nuclear_eclipse 15y ago
  T-Mobile is even better by giving you free tethering on any mobile data plan, and afaik they don't restrict Android firmwares to remove the tethering and wifi hotspot options. I've been using the tethering on my android phones for almost two years and never had to pay anything beyond the standard data plan.
  - gamble 15y ago
    You can tell when a cell phone provider is in desperate straits - they're forced to please customers, instead of screwing them out of every last penny. I don't expect these policies to survive a merger with AT&T.
    - nuclear_eclipse 15y ago
      sadly, neither do I. T-Mobile was the only carrier in the US that actually operated like a European carrier. They had no problem selling you just a sim card, would charge you a lower monthly fee for buying your phone upfront and/or providing your own....
- abraham 15y ago
  Last I checked Sprint 3G had a 5GB/m limit while 4G is actually unlimited.
  - sp332 15y ago
    Nope, Verizon has a 5 GB limit, but I've had Sprint tethering for 6 months and they've never charged me an overage. But I'm not in a 4G market, maybe the rules are different there?
hammock 15y ago
You say that like it's a bad thing.
technomancy 15y ago
Yet another reason you have to be crazy to buy a phone with carrier firmware.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

muro 15y ago

is there a source for the claim?

michaelcampbell 15y ago
I don't know where it's coming from, but I can no longer get the market to install a couple tethering apps that I once could (US, Verizon, original Droid). I'm rooted, so it doesn't matter, but this is definitely happening.
- nightpool 15y ago
  In fact, something most forget about android, you don't even need to be rooted to still install the applications, just download them from the companies website and you can install on your own. Unless you're on AT&T, who disabled that choice on their phones.
  - michaelcampbell 15y ago
    That's true, but this article is specifically about the Android market limiting access, and I was reporting my experience with it.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
kevko 15y ago
I wrote one of the (non-root, virtual network-adapter based) apps like PdaNet, and I can say that a number of people on VZW have reported this. I wonder what would happen if my app were one day open-sourced so that anyone could publish an apk to the market in 15 minutes...

napierzaza 15y ago

Looks like Google is becoming more and more closed as the day goes on. Where is your open-source god now?

rrrazdan 15y ago
Well, I'd like to quote a comment from the original posting. "If you remove one branch from a tree, doesn't change the fact that it's still a tree." This cannot in any way dwarf the magnitudes of contributions they have made to the open source world.
tzs 15y ago
> Where is your open-source god now? OT, but that raises an interesting question. Could you have an open source god? What would a religion be like if its holy texts were a wiki, that any believer could edit?
- msg 15y ago
  New Age? Unitarian Universalist? Not trying to be rude, these are merely the most obvious cases that mold themselves to the believer's opinion. Also, observe the syncretism of Buddhism in different regions.
- bitwize 15y ago
  Probably Judaism. Seriously, I think the Jews invented the wiki: consider the form and structure of the rabbinical commentary on their holy texts, very wiki-like in form and purpose. Of course ordinary believers couldn't "edit" it...
- Someone 15y ago
  Lots of forks, as in Protestant churches (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Gereformeerd.svg http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Gereformeerd.svg really starts to look like a history of Unix) Of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonite_Church_in_the_Netherlands http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonite_Church_in_the_Netherl... probably would be popular; every church member writes his own confession when joining the church.

Tichy 15y ago

Tethering is built into Android from Version 2.3 (or even 2.3), no marketplace apps needed. Anyway, I don't understand what Google is supposed to do if carriers choose to disable it. Maybe customers should be looking into other carriers if they don't like the way their carriers conduct business.

bane 15y ago
Any US carriers with good national coverage you can recommend?
michaelcampbell 15y ago
This is all true, but completely orthogonal to the story.
rst 15y ago
It was there in "stock" 2.2 as well, on the Nexus One --- but disabled in almost all carrier builds. And Google does have some leverage, if they choose to use it, in the Market compatibility requirements --- there are minimum requirements for both hardware and software if you want to get the Market, or Google's other proprietary apps. (Which, say, the Nook Color flunks --- no camera.) It might be a bridge too far for some of the carriers, but from the outside, it's not obvious that they're trying. (And looking for other carriers is not a hugely practical option in an environment where there are basically four, and the one with the most generally consumer-friendly policies, T-mobile, is up for buyout by the one with the least, AT&T, which is the only one to ban sideloading altogether.)
- Tichy 15y ago
  Not sure if access to the market is much of a leverage. I think most players in the mobile game seek to establish their own markets anyway. The phone makers certainly do.
evilduck 15y ago
There are no carriers in the US that don't play these games. Sprint is a little better about not limiting the stuff they label as Unlimited, but they still charge for tethering, have absurd overage fees if you're not on an unlimited plan, and still have Sprint/OEM specific Android builds.

gaius 15y ago

Isn't bidding without intention to actually complete the deal market abuse? It certainly is in financial markets. As in, jail time.

macrael 15y ago
I don't think there is any evidence that Google would not have paid up if they had won with their low bid, they just had no intention of winning the auction. They were confidant someone would pay more. Is that illegal in financial markets?

reader5000 15y ago

Why do carriers care if I'm accessing my paid-for data via the phone's interface or a tethered computer? It makes no sense to me.

justincormack 15y ago
Because they havent got nearly as much capacity as they sell.
- michaelcampbell 15y ago
  I think that's secondary to them not wanting you to do something for free that they would like to be charging you to do.
hammock 15y ago
Combination of two factors. A) the obvious one, that they are overselling their network capacity; and B) that given A, it is much better to reclaim bandwidth by fucking over the 0.1% of tetherers by discriminating against them at the margin than it is to fuck over 100% of normal users by throttling/changing pricing plans/etc. The carriers have put themselves into a corner where they have to make someone unhappy. All customers are paying the same $30/mo. Given the choice what would you rather do, make 10 of them unhappy or 1000 of them? Subscriber volume is your lifeblood, it's a numbers game.
- TillE 15y ago
  > they are overselling their network capacity Seriously? Two lousy gigabytes a month is "overselling"? That's, say, three hours at 200KB/s. Per month. I find that difficult to believe, except in the very most crowded areas.
  - tzs 15y ago
    Oh man, imagine the consumer confusion if they tried to tier data prices by how crowded your area is. So, someone in the middle of nowhere gets cheap data, but someone in a crowded area does not. Now in addition to voice roaming, we'd have to worry about data roaming as we move around between city, suburbs, and rural areas.

RexRollman 15y ago

Can someone explain why the carriers even care? Bandwidth is bandwidth; isn't it?

ctoneal 15y ago
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the networks don't have the capacity to handle as much as they say they do. Add on to that that someone on a laptop is probably going to eat up more data. Multitasking is easier (I generally only look at one page at a time on my phone, but I might have five tabs loading on my laptop at any given time), and there are more applications available that can chew through a connection (MMOs, torrenting, etc).
ZeroGravitas 15y ago
Price discrimination. Some people are willing to pay more while others aren't. If you can find a way to charge extra to those that will pay more, or less to those that can't afford it at the higher price, without letting people jump between tariffs to make a mockery of your scheme then you can increase your total profit and better serve your customer base. You can use the same system to more efficiently gouge a captive audience as well though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
tzs 15y ago
People use bandwidth differently depending on how they access it. Carriers design their networks and plans around the use patterns associated with particular access methods. Tethering is a difference access method, with different usage patterns, and so may not fit in well with a particular carrier's system.

beamso 15y ago

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1416#c150 http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1416#c150 states that Bluetooth PAN is in Honeycomb. Since Android 2.2 I've been able to use my Google Nexus One as a WiFi hotspot so that my laptops can use it's data connection.

yanw 15y ago

The carries hold all the cards really, and their power is only to get bigger and more consolidated.

ben1040 15y ago

This isn't that new; PDANet has been blocked on AT&T in this manner for at least a year (from my experience having tried to download it when I first got an N1). Searching for it in the Market yielded nothing when an AT&T SIM was in the phone. On my N1 the easy solution to the block was just to power down the phone, pull the SIM, then access the market over wifi. All those carrier blocked apps suddenly reappeared. I don't know if carrier locked phones still "remember" their carrier when you pull the SIM, though, and in any case I guess you're stuck with sideloading on those non-LTE Verizon devices where there's no SIM to remove.

kevko 15y ago
Putting the phone in airplane mode and turning on Wifi mode also effects the same behavior on many Android phones from AT&T. This would probably work for your Nexus, too.
neuroelectronic 15y ago
Another possible work-around is Amazon's App store. That's where I purchased EasyTeather Pro. Are the carriers/Google going to force all App stores to bend to their whims?
- ben1040 15y ago
  AT&T's app sideloading ban makes Amazon's app store moot at present, and it certainly puts AT&T in a bargaining position to request Amazon implement these carrier specific blocks too if Amazon wants access to all these AT&T devices.

hnsmurf 15y ago

I'm not sure this matters much. To use one of these apps you have to root your phone. Anyone who knows to do that knows you can sideload apks. Average consumers, who don't have the slightest clue what rooting is or why they'd want to do it, just use the tethering app installed by the carrier, or nothing at all.

broknbottle 15y ago
this isnt exactly true. I just purchased the Optimus V for use on virgin mobile and all I need to download from the market was an app called quick settings. I was than able to tether w/o even needing to be rooted
- hnsmurf 15y ago
  How is that possible? Was it USB tethering or something?

arron61 15y ago

Why is this even a surprise? Why is everyone saying it's an open vs close issue? The TOS clearly states that apps that utilize high bandwidth is a violation. Google hasn't enforced this strongly but it is against their TOS. It's the same as in Google banning porn-related material. This is not anything special. Of course Gruber jumps on the course saying it's against their open nature, but please, at least most users (besides some AT&T handsets) can still go and just install the app from a website.

msravi 15y ago
Which TOS are you referring to? The Android Marketplace TOS? Could you please point to the section of the TOS that mentions this? I find it very strange that the marketplace would be concerned about an application's bandwidth usage.
- arron61 15y ago
  (f) is deemed by Google to have a virus or is deemed to be malware, spyware or have an adverse impact on Google's or an Authorized Carrier's network; Using the network's bandwidth to tether (since you didn't pay extra for it or is not authorized to) is deemed as having an adverse impact on the carrier's network.

jsight 15y ago

This is actually really old news. This story on it is from 2 years ago: http://androidcommunity.com/android-tethering-apps-pulled-from-market-20090331/ http://androidcommunity.com/android-tethering-apps-pulled-fr...

joelhaus 15y ago

With any luck, Google has negotiated for something in return that will benefit end-users. Namely, that these carriers (ahem... Verizon) will agree to always offer the latest pure Google experience device. Most likely, Google has negotiated something that advances better/broader net access over the long-term - as this would also align with their own business interests. It's difficult to believe that threats alone could have forced Google's hand. As far as tethering goes, this seems to be exactly what the spectrum auction reserve price was designed to protect. Second, tethering apps can still be installed, just not via market. While this may be a minor inconvenience, I'm not all that concerned. Big picture/long-term, ubiquitous network access will be critical enough to the global economy, individual health and national security that it will no longer make sense to keep in the hands of private corporate interests within the current regulatory structure.

texas-saluki 15y ago

I think it is one thing for AT&T to not want to allow these apps but when Google blocks them based that I am on one network vs another is a problem. In my case I have a N1 so not an issue as of now, but in the future rooting is the way to go...unless it is eliminated from the ASOP code.