Listen up, O2! It's been two weeks since the
iPhone tethering hack was widely spread across the webs, and by now you should've worked out that we don't like how you're treating us. Our iPhone friends in Hong Kong and Canada are somewhat luckier than us here in the UK, as their carriers are kind enough to allow iPhone tethering with no extra charge (even with unlimited data in Hong Kong). For us, however, we are given a greedy minimum £15 per month tethering package on top of our so-called unlimited data tariffs. As far as we can see it makes little sense for such extortionate charge.
O2's excuse is that "
laptops and computers are far more data intensive than a mobile phone". Technically this is true, but no one's stopping them from blocking ports for P2P downloads and voice/video conferencing, and it's not hard to implement either! We'd be happy to tether just for the basic Internet needs, and most of us are sensible about this so don't treat us like kids, please. Even O2 admitted that as of 19th June they had yet to phone up anyone regarding breach of fair use policy (before charging or disconnecting them if they maintain such behaviour).
Secondly, from all the tethering speed tests I've come across, we've been getting not much more than 500kbps download speeds (I've only achieved just over 300kbps in London). Given that the native 3G speed on the iPhone 3G/3GS is much higher (around 2.5Mbps in Central London), we'll assume the former sluggish speeds are due to the little shrew pulling too much load through the socket. It's a good thing though: not only would this deter idiots from doing big downloads using tethering, but this would also limit the impact on O2's network performance. No more excuses now eh, O2?
The good news is that
O2 said to the Telegraph "We’ll see how it goes", probably hinting that they will somehow be monitoring our tether hack usage, and chances are they may consider fixing their wrong and eventually offer us what we want: free tethering, even if there may be some restrictions to keep their own hamsters running well. This is the least they could offer us loyal O2 customers.
O2, I know you're not speaking to me any more, but at least one of you will be reading this: you're still the best carrier in the UK in terms of service and support, but this is one hell of a mole on your chin, so please don't let us down!
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