I hate to rain on Gary’s parade, but the idea of dishing out another ten bucks a month to tether my laptop to my iPhone just sounds silly to me.  Maybe that’s because I read WAY between the lines.  Or, maybe it’s because I’m cheap.

Anyway, the iPhone tax is high enough as it is.  You’re in it for $100/month just to own an iPhone. This is why the non-nerdy don’t buy data plans.  But imagine the economy of scale if unlimited 3G was 50% less expensive per subscriber.  Even if AT&T can’t do that, the fact that you can’t tether your iPhone is disappointing to begin with.  Tethering should be an out of the box feature.

After all, you’re saying, when you buy an iPhone, “Hey, AT&T, I know you’re a giant customer-shafting carrier [a totally legit business model in this day and age], but I’m going to go along with your smelly customer-reviling existence because it’s the only way I can get my grubby hands on an iPhone without doing questionable things. Please, please, how about letting me tether?  It’s not like I’m going to use more simultaneous bandwidth on my laptop than I do on the iPhone by itself.”

To which AT&T replies, “No, no, no.  See, we can get $120 more bucks a year from you.”

How appropriate a thing for a big telco to say.  Reminds me of the carriers saying you can’t use a broaband router and multiple PCs on a DSL line a few years back.