Charging extra for iPhone tethering really that bad?
Posted iPhone at Jun 09, 2009
There seams to be a great deal of anger on the Internet over the new iPhone. I agree with the outrage over upgrade costs, but I have to disagree with iPhone fans complaining about the extra £14.68 p/m tethering costs.
The problem
The main argument against it is that iPhone fans do not see why they need to pay extra when they already have "unlimited data" plans for their iPhone. While I hate companies using "unlimited" incorrectly, by now we should all know that everything has limits. In this case, the limits are the actual bandwidth o2's networks can handle.
The history
Let's go back about a year when the original iPhone 3G started having problems. o2 basically over-sold the iPhone to past maximum capacity for their networks, meaning that 3G useage was slow and dropped out on a regular basis. This has slowly got slightly better over the last year as o2 have upgraded their networks bandwidth, but as more and more users gert iPhones and more applications come out that get users burning through their "unlimited data" plans, that network is getting to bursting point.
Why do I agree?
There are two reasons I agree with o2 on the extra cost here.
Firstly, if we are all given full tethering access via our iPhones, people will be sending and recieving considerably more data than before. They'll be sending e-mail attachments, playing online games, downloading large files, generally doing everything they normally do on their laptops. If this happens, we are all screwed. If the network is already struggling with basic web-browsing and streaming compressed music, how the hell are we going to get anywhere with people blitzing the network to play WoW?
Secondly, why not? The "unlimited data" plans cover "free unlimited data transfer for the iPhone". This data is not being used on the iPhone, it is being used on your laptop. That makes sense to me. This is basically a way to stop you having to sign up to a seperate mobile broadband service and carry an extra USB dongle around with you.
Finally, The extra cost may (if we are lucky) go towards upgrading their networks at a much faster rate which is great for everyone. It means apps will be allowed greater bandwidth limits and everything can work a bit quicker.
Let's not complain straight away, this could be a good thing for all of us.
That said, if they do not use this money to improve their networks: I will be the first to retract this post and fill the space with lots of rude words.
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