“It was clear from our initial application iTether, there was enormous demand within the iPhone ecosystem,” says Tim Burke, CEO of Tether, on the company’s blog. “It was unfortunate that Apple decided to remove our application, only 20 hours after we launched. However, this caused us to innovate. Our underlying patent-pending technology behind Tether for iPhone is unlike anything on the market.”
Tether’s new version for the iPhone is purely based on HTML5 and creates a completely wireless connection over AdHoc. This circumvents the need of buying the application directly from Apple’s App Store and allows any iPhone or iPad with a data connection to allow tethering.
Frequent travelers in particular love Tether because it works all over the world, no matter what network or carrier is available at the time. There’s no need to worry about reconfiguring the Internet connection from network to network.
Features:
• Internet Anywhere: You can use Tether anywhere you have cellular coverage.
• Easy Setup: Download our software to your iPhone and another for your laptop. Then surf the web and email just like you would with any Internet connection.
• Fast Speeds: Download speeds that are unbelievably fast.
• No Tethering Fees: Tether uses your phone’s data plan and we do not charge tethering fees.
• All iPhones: Tether is compatible with all iPhones.
• All Carriers: Tether has been used on carriers all over the world.
• Mac and Windows Compatible
A subscription to Tether costs $30 per year (30-day money back guarantee).
More info here.
MacDailyNews Take: Data is data. Take that, dumb pipes!
MacDailyNews Note: If you got a new iPad Wi-Fi + 4G with Verizon Wireless, you will have tethering via those units for no additional charge.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Edward Weber” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Verizon including mobile hotspot in iPad data plans at no additional charge – March 8, 2012
That didn’t take long: After download frenzy, Apple pulls iTether from App Store – November 29, 2011
‘iTether’ unlimited tethering app appears in Apple’s App Store (with video) – November 29, 2011
Yes! more innovations like this will kill off stupid wireless companies like AT&T where they try to shunt a pipe up the customer’s [ explicit content deleted ] just to suck out all the money they can…
You keep your money in that unmentionable place you will inevitably lose it anyway.
lol +10
Answer: Apple, acquire them now.
Umm…how about after the share price drops in half?
The iTether app was only $15, now they get $30 a year. Hmm.
Still better than $20/month. As Mr. Moviephone says, “I’m in!”
Could u tether ur iPhone to ur iPad with this download especially if u have AT&T?
I don’t see how you can use this with an iPhone to an iPad. They only mention iPhone to a laptop. That stops me cold.
Yes, there is no way that an application is allowed to create a ad hoc Wi-Fi network on iPad/iPhone/iPod touch.
However, if your iOS device is jail-broken, it is possible.
Genius. The flood-gates have just been opened.
I think Apple executives are smiling at this development. The carriers tied their hands before, but they can’t do anything about the open web.
What hypocrisy!
ATT spends billions to build out and operate a cellular network and people complain about paying them a reasonable price to use their network.
Tether writes a few hundred lines of code and people are excited about paying them $30 per year. After doubling their price!
What hypocrisy from MDN and its readers!
It’s not hypocrisy. Here’s the difference: I’m paying AT&T $30 a month for 3GB of data for my iPhone. I never come anywhere close to 1GB, nevermind 3GB. But if I want to tether my MacBook Pro to my iPhone I have to pay AT&T an extra $20 a month for the privilege. Yeah, they give me another 2GB, but I don’t even use the 3GB I have. Long story short, AT&T should make tethering FREE. You should be able to use your allocated data however you want. If I end up going over 3GB, I’ll be happy to pay AT&T that extra $20 for 2GB more.
So in the case of Tether, I’d rather pay them $30 a year to use my existing 3GB of data than pay AT&T $240 a year for 5GB I’ll never use.
well put.
Precisely. Data is data. It doesn’t matter where it’s going – into the iPhone or into the MacBook Pro. So as long as we stay within our 3 or 5 gig limits we shouldn’t have to pay extra to tether.
This would still eat up my 2gb data pretty quick, or am I missing something?
Carriers to begin blocking Tether.com in 3..2..1
$5 says AT&T, Verizon, and sprint figure out a way to see you are using itether and switch you over to the data tether plan. (after a warning)
Just like they did with jailbroken iPhones using the tether apps last year.
I have no use for this, I am not so desperate to have the Internet on my MBP that I need to pay for this.
99% of the time the MBP doesn’t leave my house.. And when it does, it’s to a place with wifi.
FYI It’s only $15 for the first year.
I just signed up, and my iPhone 4 is now the hotspot for my MacBook Air, upon which I am writing this. If I go to another app from Safari on the iPhone, then data transmission stops. It resumes again when I bring Safari back up. I’m getting pretty quick page refreshes with my five bars of AT&T service.
I have the AT&T unlimited plan (got it two days before iPhone 4 launched) so will be careful not to exceed 3GB/month to avoid the drastic throttling that I’ve heard about. I expect to use “tether” occasionally as needed, when I’m traveling, or if I decide to bring my Macbook in to work where I only have access to wifi via my company Dell. Or when my Comcast network service goes belly up (it’s happened a few times).
Now, as to how much privacy I have with all my data going through tether’s server – well, I’m not expecting that much, and will act accordingly. I sure hope that AT&T doesn’t figure out some end run here to block this service. I’m paying for what turns out to be 3 GB/month of unthrottled data, I should get to use it.
I was going to finish by saying that I couldn’t be happier, then my connection stalled the first time I tried to post this comment. it took a few minutes of trying to get the connection going again. When my phone’s screen auto-locked after 5 minutes, the connection was interrupted. I had to set auto-lock to never. Now it’s working again. I’ll see how reliable this is over the next week or so.
I’d appreciate hearing about others’ experience with this service. When my connection is working, it’s pretty fast.
MDN-what are you thinking?
I already pay for unlimited cellular on my AT&T iPhone 4S, why should I have to pay, again, for cellular access? I agree that Verizon’s is a step in the right direction, but it is only a step. Also, the pay as you go data plans are ridiculously expensive, if you use them much! I’m really not sure I want another cellular capable iPad because I never use it on my current iPad. Wifi is just about everywhere.
The thing that gets me is ATT counts on its subscribers to be clueless, yet they are selling those people “smartphones”.
I think ATT figures people don’t know how to use Google, Blekko, Bing & others to figure out what is going on.
Limiting subscriber’s access to data with different “plans” is so 2000. If they don’t watch out, the iPhone 5 will have me on Verizon in 6 months or so.
Do it like Steve Jobs. Have one plan…simple…you pay for what you use, regardless of what device or devices use the connection…it DOES NOT MATTER!
great idea. I purchased and downloaded to MBP as instructed. Applications>tether creates a network. Log into tether account using iPhone>Safari as instructed. Select the created WIFI network using iPhone>Settings>WIFI, as instructed. iPhone “sees” the network but there is no connection. Great idea. I hope I can get it to work. But so far, NO JOY!
iPhone 4 is missing Never option for auto-lock. This is a big issue as Tether won’t work if screen is locked.
The Never option is there on my iPhone 4 running IOS 5.1.
I followed all the directions on Tether’s website and it does not work for me. I installed Tether software on my laptop. But, after loading it when a window open asking me to name the ad hoc network, it doesn’t take any name that I put in. It gives me an error saying try a different SSID and then closes Tether application on my laptop. I sent an email to their support service and so far as of now no response yet. I tried their forum yesterday and as of then no forum on iPhone phones exist. I am pretty disappointed. If you are thinking about trying it, wait until they fix all the bugs. Most likely I will ask for a refund.
American carriers must be different. The two major Canadian carriers, Bell and Rogers, both include tethering as part of your plan so why would this service even be needed. This company started with providing Blackberry tethering options and received Nova Scotia government money to do so. I don’t expect to see them around for long.
If I already bought this app back in November, will I have to pay the $15 (or $30) per month?
Yes. Previous article I read said the company apologizes to those that have to repay, but that is the unfortunate situation Apple put them in.
Cant beleive how complex this is. RIM got it right first time with the Playbook to Blackberry bridging technology.
Orange UK provide this free as standard with iPhone 4s as does O2 UK. Infact if I am not mistaken all UK providers do