AT&T to charge $30/month for tethering, says MacBlogz

I have no idea why anyone would be surprised that AT&T would charge for this. The $30 monthly fee paid now is for data TO ONE DEVICE (i.e., the iPhone). It was not promised or intended as a free conduit for high-speed access to any other device you happened to have handy.

It's what they're already charging for a similar service for Blackberry, so the price should be no surprise. And for those who don't want to tether than don't buy the plan. For those that utilize a third-party air card, the $30 will likely represent a 50% savings over what they hve now.

Meanwhile, for those mentioning the NetShare app, it's nothing more than a leach off a service Nullriver doesn’t provide. Bringing them up gives them more credit than they deserve. Awfully nice of them to write an app to “steal” bandwidth that’s not theirs, for use in a manner that is prohibited, and to charge you for the privilege.

Right now I pay what I consider a fair price, given the circumstances. I will NOT pay more for tethering since that would be a RIPOFF. So, if we're back to ripping, I will use NetShare. Or jailbreak. But, NO MORE money out of my pocket. No sir!

ik on a 2G and Im certainly NOT going to pay 3G prices for tethering. Especially ridiculous ones like that.

ATT are you listening? Your early adopters are getting shafted x2.

Also, why not a contextual limit so there is no worry about BT or MMORPG use, just throttle it.

Yea. Wow, that sounds like a really good deal. But I think I got a better one.

....................../´¯/)
....................,/¯../
.................../..../
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯
........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')
..........................'...../
..........''............. _.·´
..........................(
..............................

What's with Ars being in the Title? There not the Source.

Blow me AT&T. I'll be jailbreaking my phone before I pay another cent on AT7T service: service that sucks by the way.

$30 a month for a cap at 5 gigs vs $10 at a really lucky time when NetShare came back up on the iTunes store... hmm hard decision there.

To be fair though, I dont utilize my NetShare except in dire situations where iPhone browsing just can't do what I need...

My real question is: will this tethering be wired or will it make use of the same type of programming system that NetShare uses, which I would assume falls SOMEWHERE in that copyright law stuff we hear about from time to time... Preventing a company from selling its products is illegal, though the distributor agreement probably covers that, however to then take the idea and put it into action for profit sounds quite wrong in my book.

Otherwise I'm all for the update, though I'm not going to pay for it anyway...

AT&T: Home of the $20, $30, $60, and $80 unlimited internet plans!

isn't 1000kbps really 1mgps?

Hahah! In Denmark we have unlimited data plan (they will have a strange look in their faces if you use above 10gb, but you won't be charged) - and PdaNet works just fine!