Saturday, March 27, 2010

Tether for Blackberry

I am posting this blog note from from Hwy 52 between Cannon Falls and Minneapolis, MN, from the passenger seat of course. I have my laptop connected to my AT&T BlackBerry 8900 via Bluetooth and am using Tether to access the Internet through the BlackBerry data connection.

The setup was amazingly simple after a simple trial sign-up at tether.com. I downloaded and installed a simple client on my laptop, then downloaded (OTA) a client for the BlackBerry handheld. I initiated a Bluetooth pair between the handheld with the laptop, then started the Tether client on both devices. It automatically connected and I was browsing the web on the laptop in less than 30 seconds.


Tether offers a 7-day trial for free, then the product is $50. Contrary to my prior understanding (assumption) you do NOT need to have special provisioning on your BlackBerry line of service to make this work. I have already downloaded 12.5 MB of data through this connection, I wonder if AT&T can even recognize the difference in the data stream? My BlackBerry line of service clearly indicates unlimited data, I hope unlimited really means unlimited.