AT&T forcing MyWi users to buy data tethering

If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you probably use the jailbroken app MyWi which allows you to tether your data connection and allow Wi-Fi-enabled devices to connect to the data connection.  This does not cost anything extra when using a jailbroken app to do it.  However, AT&T offers tethering plans that they want you to buy in order to use tethering.  They are going to start cracking down on MiWi users by forcing them to either call AT&T about their MiWi usage or else they will be automatically billed $45/month for a DataPro plan which gives you 4GB/month and tethering.  Your only way out of this charge is to call AT&T or discontinue your use of MiWi.

To inform users that they know about the illegal tethering, AT&T has sent free text messages out to the culprits that have been detected to be tethering without a plan.  Here is what the message reads:

AT&T Free Msg: Did you know tethering your Smartphone to a computer requires a tethering plan? Pls call 888-860-6789 for details or visit att.com/dataplans.

Dear [Customer],

We’ve noticed your service plan may need updating.

Many AT&T customers use their smartphones as a broadband connection for other devices, like laptops, netbooks or other smartphones– a practice commonly known as tethering. Tethering can be an efficient way for our customers to enjoy the benefits of AT&T’s mobile broadband network and use more than one device to stay in touch with important people and information. To take advantage of this feature, we require that in addition to a data plan, you also have a tethering plan.

Our records show that you use this capability, but are not subscribed to our tethering plan.

If you would like to continue tethering, please log into
your account online at Cell Phones and Cell Phone Plans – Wireless from AT&T, or call us
at 1-888-860-6789 Monday – Friday, 7 a.m. – 9 p.m. CST
or Saturday, 8 a.m. – 7 p.m. CST, by March 27, 2011
to sign up for DataPro 4GB for Smartphone Tethering.
Here are details on the plan:

DataPro 4GB for Smartphone Tethering
• $45 per month
(this gives you 4GB in total, combining both your smartphone data plan for $25 and the tethering feature, $20)
• $10 per each additional GB thereafter, added automatically as needed
• Mobile Hotspot capabilities are included for compatible Smartphones

If we don’t hear from you, we’ll plan to automatically enroll you into DataPro 4GB afterMarch 27, 2011. The new plan – whether you sign up on your own or we automatically enroll you – will replace your current smartphone data plan, including if you are on an unlimited data plan.

If you discontinue tethering, no changes to your current plan will be required.

It’s easy to track your usage throughout the month so there are no bill surprises. For example, we send you free text messages when you reach 65, 90, and 100 percent of your plan’s threshold. If you would like to monitor your account more closely, go towww.att.com/dataplans to learn about other ways to track your data usage.

As a reminder, our smartphone data plans also include unlimited usage of Wi-Fi at no additional charge. AT&T smartphone customers can use Wi-Fi at home or on-the-go at any one of our more than 23,000 U.S. hotspots already included in your data plan.

Thank you for bringing your account up to date. We appreciate the opportunity to continue to serve your mobile broadband needs.

Sincerely,

AT&T

[Via ziPhone]

Email the author of this post at mikebed96@wohotech.com.

AT&T buys T-Mobile

After long rumors, it is officially announced that AT&T will acquire T-Mobile.  For a full press release, click here.  Still awaiting more information on how this will all play out.

Email the author of this post at mikebed96@wohotech.com.

Verizon & T-Mobile have fastest 4G networks

PC World did a test between Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint to see who has the fastest 4G network.  There were two categories:  laptop modem tests and smartphone tests.  Here are the results:

As you can see, Verizon takes the lead for fastest 4G network for laptop modems.  In fact, they take an outstanding lead by offering about 4 mbps faster download speeds and about 4 mbps faster upload speeds.

On another note, Verizon has the slowest 4G network for smartphones.  The winner of this category is T-Mobile, clocking in at 2.28 mbps downloading and 0.95 mbps uploading.

Should you let these results play an impact on which carrier you use?  Probably not.  4G internet is still early in the works.  In fact, the definition of 4G is very loose.  Each carrier has their own type of 4G network (e.g. LTE and HSPA+).  As 4G continues to develop, speeds will increase and 4G coverage will spread wider.

For now, it’s just a matter of who started first and who invested the most time into 4G.  Think about it:  Verizon is the first carrier to bring 4G to laptops, however Verizon to this date doesn’t even offer any 4G phones yet.  I’m sure that if you give the carriers a little more time to fully develop their 4G service, things will even out a little bit more.

Email the author of this post at mikebed96@wohotech.com.

AT&T to have Personal Hotspot for iPhone

When the Personal Hotspot feature was announced with the Verizon iPhone, it was only going to be available for Verizon users.  In iOS 4.3, Apple adds the Personal Hotspot feature to all iPhones running iOS 4.3, regardless of the carrier.  However, the carrier must still support the Personal Hotspot feature, otherwise it will not work.

Recently, AT&T has granted a developer the use of Personal Hotspot.

It is not available to the public, yet.  However, it is expected to be available on or sometime near the release of iOS 4.3.  AT&T iPhone users would only be able to use the Personal Hotspot feature with iOS 4.3.  Stay tuned to WohoTech to see if AT&T will go through with Personal Hotspot and when it will happen.

Email the author of this post at mikebed96@wohotech.com.

VZW iPhone Hotspot Feature: $20 a month?

iOS 4.3, the upcoming new operating system for iPhones, will include a Personal Hotspot feature.  While this feature will be available on all devices, it will only work if you are using the device on Verizon’s network.  Many people are very excited about this new feature.  However, a bomb has just been dropped on those people’s hearts.

Verizon is going to charge an extra $20 a month if you want to use the personal hotspot feature on your Verizon iPhone.  Business-wise, this is a good move.  No other carrier supports the iPhone’s Personal Hotspot, making people look to Verizon to use it.  Verizon is taking advantage of this opportunity and making an extra buck.  Or twenty.

Consumer-wise, people are not happy.  However, Wi-Fi tethering on most smartphones costs extra money, anyways.  So the price shouldn’t be a huge bummer; the bummer is that we didn’t think about there ever being a price.  Our hopes got way up and have now floated down a little, unless you have no problem at all about paying an extra $20 a month for Personal Hotspot.

For those who may not know, the Verizon iPhone will only support 3G.  Therefore, Personal Hotspot will only broadcast a 3G connection, not 4G.

To read up all about the Verizon iPhone and Personal Hotspot, click here for an introduction to the Verizon iPhone.  Click here for a list of things you should know when debating between AT&T and Verizon.

Best Buy teaming up with AT&T against Verizon

A recent report from Best Buy indicates that they are joining the fight with AT&T against Verizon Wireless.  Their goal is to persuade consumers how the AT&T iPhone is a much better pick than the Verizon iPhone.  Best Buy is probably doing this because they will not be receiving the Verizon iPhone, and therefore want to sell more AT&T iPhones.  Although Best Buy is very one-sided right now, they bring up some good points.  Here are some of their arguments also with counter-arguments:

• Best Buy:  The Verizon iPhone is an outdated device; it is a 3G phone on a 4G network (Counter-argument: The AT&T iPhone is 3G, too.  And AT&T may not have a 4G network as large as Verizon’s anytime soon.)
• Best Buy:  AT&T will offer more text messaging options, such as the option of 200 and 1500 messages/month plans. (Counter-argument: Most people with text messaging plans use unlimited plans.  A small majority of people with text messaging plans use the limited plans.)
• Best Buy:  The AT&T iPhone has the capability of surfing the web & talking on the phone at the same time, while the Verizon iPhone does not support this. (Counter-argument: Verizon has said that they will have this feature in the near-future.)
• Best Buy:  AT&T has faster 3G speed: About 35% faster than Verizon’s 3G network. (Counter-argument:  Yes, but AT&T only has a 35% call success rate.  One of the biggest annoyances people have with AT&T is dropped calls.  Verizon does not seem to have this issue.)

Which one sounds better to you now?  The AT&T iPhone or the Verizon iPhone?

Some things you should know about Verizon vs. AT&T

With the announcement of the Verizon iPhone 4, many people immediately come to the conclusion that they must have the iPhone on Verizon instead of AT&T.  But Verizon isn’t the perfect network, either.  Here are some pros and cons to both of the networks (click on the chart to make it bigger):

Click the chart to make it bigger.

The first category is worldwide usage.  Verizon and AT&T use different signals in their phones.  AT&T’s signal, called GSM, is a more global signal.  It won’t work in every country, but it will work in more countries than Verizon’s signal, called CDMA, will work in.  If you are a global traveler, you’re going to want to use AT&T.

The second category is another advantage to a GSM network.  CDMA signals use more battery power.  Therefore, in general, AT&T’s phones have a longer battery life than Verizon’s phones.  This does not have to do with the phone and its manufacturer but simply the fact that Verizon’s phones use CDMA instead of GSM.

The third category is the ability to easily switch phones.  If you have upgraded your phone, you may have 2 phones if you didn’t trash your old one.  AT&T uses SIM cards which are little cards that contain all of your account information.  In order for the phone to work on your account, you need to have your SIM card in the phone.  If at any time you wanted to use your account on another phone, you can simply put your SIM card in that phone.  This is nice if you have more than 1 phone and you completely ruin your primary phone.  With AT&T, you do not need to call Verizon to get another phone activated.  Simply plop your SIM card in the phone.  Verizon, however, does not use SIM cards.  Therefore, if you wanted to switch phones, you need to call Verizon and go through a certain process of activating the new phone.  This isn’t a huge issue since usually you don’t switch phones every 5 minutes, but some people like the ability to easily switch phones if needed.

The fourth category, and maybe the most important to some people, is dropped calls.  AT&T has a reputation with dropped calls.  Not a good one, either.  Probably the biggest problem people complain about with AT&T is dropped calls.  Some people experience over 20 dropped calls a week, even if they aren’t in a bad service area.  They can have full service and the call will randomly hang up.  Verizon does not have these problems; usually dropped calls only happen when you are in an area with sketchy service out in the middle of nowhere.  If you talk on the phone a lot, especially for business, you are going to want to use the trusty Verizon network.

The next category is 3G speed.  We are not talking 4G here because AT&T does not yet have 4G so there is not really anything to compare to.  Anyways, AT&T has been shown to have slightly faster 3G service than Verizon.  It also seems like this will hold true of AT&T’s 4G LTE network which will start launching this summer.  During a speed test at CES 2011, AT&T was able to get up to 100 mbps downloading, and they claim to be able to get up to 50 mbps uploading.  This is much faster than most home networks!  However, Verizon’s 3G speed isn’t bad; it’s just not as fast.  But it is certainly usable and there isn’t a very notable difference between the two carriers’ speed.

Another important category is the ability to talk and surf the web at the same time.  Verizon does not support this yet, but they claim to be working on it for the future.  Meanwhile, AT&T already supports simultaneous voice and data.

Mobile Hotspot Applications allow you to make your cell phone a hotspot for up to 5 devices.  This allows you to provide internet to maybe your laptop without having to buy a 3G/4G adapter of some sort.  Verizon currently supports this (it is coming on the Verizon iPhone 4) but AT&T does not support this. (Some people think that AT&T will support this soon because it is rumored that in iOS 4.3, Mobile Hotspot Application will be in all iPhones regardless of the carrier.  But the carrier still needs to support this feature for it to work.)

The quality of customer service is yet another important category.  Customers want to be treated like a customer, and Verizon is very good at doing that.  AT&T has been reprimanded for not showing respect or sympathy to customers.

Probably the most important category is price.  Except in this case.  The two carriers are very similar in price.  On Verizon, a plan offering unlimited talk, unlimited text, and 150 MB of data costs $104.99.  I tried to put together an AT&T plan that was very similar to the Verizon example.  AT&T offers unlimited talk, unlimited text, but not 150MB of data.  Instead, you must get at least 200MB of data.  Nevertheless, it is the same price: $104.99 per month for each carrier.  If you want to be picky, you can say that AT&T gives you more for your money because they give you 50 MB more for the same price.

Hopefully this will give you more insight on the Verizon vs. AT&T situation that is brewing, especially with the announcement of the iPhone 4 being on both carriers.

Hello, Verizon iPhone!

After much speculation and a technical mishap on Verizon’s website (explained later), it is confirmed that Verizon is going to carry the iPhone 4.  Today, January 11, Verizon held a special event where many speculated that they would announce an iPhone running on Verizon’s network.  One reason led to another.  The first big clue was explained in a past article that you can read by clicking here.  The second clue that kind of just completely gave out the secret was that last night on Verizon’s website, Apple was listed as one of the smartphone manufacturers.  Many people said this was because Verizon carries the iPad, but the iPad is listed under another section of the site.  It was very clear that Apple has been added to the smartphone manufacturer list on Verizon’s website.  Anyways, all speculation and suspense have been cleared.  The iPhone 4 running on Verizon’s network has been announced.  It will start at $200 for the 16GB version.  The pre-order page can be accessed here.  Apple has also put an announcement on their website, as well.

We are guessing that the plans will be similar to the other Verizon smartphone plans, but none of that information has been released yet (It is expected that Verizon’s iPhone will have truly unlimited data, whereas AT&T’s “unlimited” data plan has a cap).  The downside is that when getting this new iPhone, you are locked into a 2 year contract with Verizon.  The bad part about this is that it is expected that a new iPhone will be released in June-ish.  If you buy the iPhone 4 when released on Verizon, you will not be able to upgrade to the iPhone 5 (iPhone 5?…newer iPhone) until after 2 years.  You have to decide for yourself whether you want to get the iPhone 4 now or wait for a new iPhone.  (A big advantage of waiting is that you may see a LTE iPhone 5 when announced.  Explained later.)

The Verizon iPhone will become available to the general public on February 10th.  However, if you are a Verizon Wireless customer (That’s me!) you can reserve one to get it on February 3rd.

I talked about LTE iPhone 5 a little bit ago.   No, Verizon’s iPhone 4 will not have LTE.  It will run on CDMA for talk and 3G.  This brings up another con of buying the Verizon iPhone 4: When an iPhone 5 is released, it will probably have LTE (probably on both Verizon and AT&T).  Read my article about what the heck 4G LTE is by clicking here.

Many questions have arose about a white iPhone 4.  While a white iPhone appears on Verizon’s website, it has not been directly stated by Verizon that they will carry a white iPhone 4.

A cool feature that will be available on this iPhone is a hotspot application.  This will allow you to connect up to 5 devices at a time to your iPhone so you can share your internet connection.  However, this brings up another con when thinking about purchasing a Verizon iPhone now.  When or if the Verizon iPhone 5 will have LTE, it will be much more worth while to use the hotspot application.  4G has been proven faster than most home networks.  It can get up to 100 mbps download and 50 mbps upload.  Those speeds are ridiculously fast and this hotspot application may have some people using their iPhone’s 4G connection on their computers instead of their land-line or cable connection.

Another cool fix on the Verizon iPhone is the antenna.  The crappy antenna on the iPhone 4 has been a major issue from the start, and has caused many headaches.  After the initial release of the iPhone 4 with AT&T, the messed up antenna was talked about all over, even Fox News.  The problem with the antenna was that it was designed to have better reception.  They did this by hooking up the antenna to the outer aluminum bands on the side of the phone.  What would happen, though, was when you held the phone, your service would dramatically go down.  Obviously, speed tests were only ran with the iPhone sitting on a table and not done with real-world tests.  Apple has supposedly fixed this issue by changing where the antenna is on the iPhone.  Where the antennas connect to each other has been changed and the main antenna is now on the top and bottom of the phone instead of the sides.  Some reports do indicate that with real-world usage, they do not loose any signal by holding the iPhone with a regular grip. (One report indicates that if you squeeze the sides and cover up the top and bottom, you will loose signal.)

Here is a hands-on video of the Verizon iPhone 4.  You can’t really hear anything, but you can see what it looks like:

Will you buy the Verizon iPhone? Answer this poll!

4G (LTE+HSPA) For Dummies: What is it?

In the last post, I talked a lot about 4G.  But what exactly is it?

4G is a new way of accessing the internet from a mobile device.  It stands for 4th Generation Mobile Connectivity.  It is used by wireless companies like Verizon and AT&T.  4G can currently be used on computers using a network adapter given to you by your wireless provider.  4G will soon start appearing on phones in the next month, and 4G tablet computers (maybe a 4G iPad?) will start appearing in the summer.

What is so special about 4G?  It is crazy fast!  At a recent 4G demo at the AT&T Keynote at today’s CES Press Day, it tested at about 55mbps downloading (they could not show an uploading test).  Overall, it is rated at up to 100mbps download and about 50 mbps upload.  This is much faster than 3G internet.  And, what is super impressive, is that it is faster than most home networks which average at 5-20mbps downloading and 0.5-5mbps uploading.  But keep in mind, 4G numbers sound high now, but once released they will probably drop about 20mbps due to many more people using it.

To make things a little more confusing, there are 2 versions of 4G.  They are 4G LTE and HSPA+.  LTE stands for Long Term Evolution and HSPA stands for High Speed Packet Access.  The basic difference is that LTE is faster than HSPA.  But why do we have HSPA?  That brings us to Verizon vs. AT&T.

Verizon has had 4G LTE for a couple of months now.  It has been available to computers only as there are no 4G phones that have been released yet.  But, like regular voice calling service, 4G LTE isn’t available all over the place.  If you ever enter a spot that does not have 4G LTE, you suddenly drop to 3G or basic data.  This is highly criticized because there is a huge speed difference, which AT&T has accounted for.

AT&T does not have 4G out to any device yet, but it does have one major advantage over Verizon.  That is the fact that AT&T takes advantage of 4G HSPA.  AT&T uses HSPA as a secondary 4G.  HSPA will be set up in most places where LTE is not available, so if you ever enter a non-LTE zone, you do not experience a huge speed crash.  Instead, you have a slight speed drop when you switch to HSPA.  Not all areas will have LTE and/or HSPA, so some areas will still have either 3G or basic data.

Click here for the AT&T keynote article which introduces over 20 new 4G phones that are soon to be released.

Stay tuned to TechTime for more CES coverage.

AT&T 4G LTE: Super fast

As I was digging up more info about AT&T’s new 4G LTE (which is launching this summer), I found this amazing video on TechnoBuffalo.  It is demonstrating 4G LTE by streaming a full HD video on a smartphone.  The speed was excellent.  You didn’t have to pause to wait for it to load a little, and you could also jump to an unloaded part of the video and it would resume playing immediately.  Check out the video: