AT&T Mobility CED, Ralph De La Vega, has recently announced the arrival of the tethering plans for the iPhone. We all knew that AT&T has been working with Apple to bring an official tethering plan to iPhone customers, but no previous details have been leaked.
AT&T has always done their best to bring customers what they want in a cellular service, iPhone owners have been asking for a tethering plan for over a year not but AT&T could not deliver because of the network. Ralph De La Vega said, “Regardless of how many billions of dollars AT&T pours into their 3G network, it hasn’t been stable enough to handle all you iPhone users,”
AT&T is simply worried as to how well the network will hold up to millions of users all jumping on at one time. They have never has such an issue because there has never been such a huge rush in data use in their history. There is still no word on an official launch date. Here are the details on the iPhone tethering plans:
- 5GB Data Cap (just like Blackberry users) – AT&T will automatically turn off your tethering connection if you use too much bandwidth. Of note, the 5GB cap might get sliced for all users, not just iPhone users, in order to accommodate all new tethering plan customers (bandwidth demand).
- Initial connection through iTunes? (not sure if this is every time you connect, or just for initial setup)
- Expected speeds: GPRS: 30k – dialup speeds / EDGE: 110k – ISDN speeds / 3G: 1000k – slow broadband.
- You’ll want to disable auto-updates for everything, so as to not go over usage limitations.
- Will be +$30/month, new iPhone plans may be rolled out with tethering rolled in.
- Do not pro-rate tethering/bandwidth, it can become a nightmare, instead wait until new billing cycle.
- For unlimited bandwidth, AT&T will tell you to get a wireless PC card.
- No idea on a launch date.
[Via MacBlogz]
