Don't Hold Your Breath For iPhone Tethering
While the rest of the world has been enjoying in the convenience of using the iPhone's 3G data connection to provide data to other devices, users here in the United States have been languishing in AT&T's apparent state of data network unreadiness. iPhone tethering was announced nearly a year ago at last June's WWDC as part of iPhone 3.0's new package of upgrades. With the anniversary of that unveiling just a few weeks away, iPhone users are still left scratching their heads as to when this function will finally arrive.
Engadget reached out to AT&T to find some answers and here is AT&T's response:
iPhone tethering has the potential to exponentially increase traffic, and we need to ensure that we're able to deliver excellent performance for the feature - over and above the increases in data traffic we're already seeing - before we will offer the feature.
As iPhone owners, we all have a love/hate relationship with AT&T and have probably experienced troubles with the network due to our day to day use of our beloved iPhones. And it would probably be safe to say that tethering would compromise a network that is already being pushed to its limits as it is. With that being said, how does this bode for AT&T as 3G iPads with the promise of truly unlimited data are set to fly off Apple store shelves this weekend? And with the rumor of a front facing camera coming to the next generation iPhone, will we be limited to WiFi only iChat sessions because of AT&T's data strained network?
For now, the lack of tethering may be the one last great reason to jailbreak your iPhone. Because it doesn't look like we'll be seeing a tethering option any time soon.
