Major US carriers are blocking Android tethering apps

04 May, 2011

Android owners in the US won’t be happy about this – carriers have started blocking the apps that enable tethering on their phones. It’s a service they charge $15-$20 a month after all, you can’t expect them to let you have it for free.

Reports from all over the Internet are coming in saying that AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are all blocking the tethering apps from the Market (both free and paid ones). Sprint seems to be the one operator that hasn’t blocked the tethering apps.

People who live outside the US might be scratching their heads wondering why you’d need an app to do what the OS can do on its own – well, US carriers usually disable that functionality, until you pay of course. AT&T goes as far as locking out the option to install third-party apps from sources other than the Market.

Finding the apps from other sources is much harder that way. And even if you manage to install those, you might get an email from the carrier – AT&T for one, has been sending out messages to those who use tethering without paying for it first.

It's the very reason why the latest 3.0 version of the popular tethering application PDA Net now features cloaking to mask the tethering activity from your carrier.

If you’re in the US, drop us a comment to say if tethering apps have been blocked for you.

Source

Reader comments

phoneboi
11 May 2011
3Ax

Surely if they thought about it they could just give you a fair use policy like they do in uk. your browsing is capped at 500mb if you exceed this limit you get raped on charges. if you want you can use tethering but it will use 500mb quickly.

bluechrism
05 May 2011
FT4

Thay all have 3g data dongles for laptops that come with a higher priced data plan than the mobile plans. They are protecting that part of the business. It's dumb and they (or at least one of them) should just make these plans the same as mobile ph...

twins
05 May 2011
Mkd

if you know a little linux and have rooted your phone, you can still route your ppp connection through the wireless with just a little effort: ifconfig, a few iptables commands, enable ipv4_forward and install dnsmasq or a dhcp server and it's done...