You're out in the middle of noplace with your laptop - no ethernet, no WiFi - and you really need to download your mail or look at a map online. If you have an Air Card (which is Sierra Wireless' registered name for a "mobile broadband card" like Kleenex is to tissues) and a cell signal, you're golden. But most of us don't care to spend a $100+ for the card plus $30 to $70 per month for the service IN ADDITION TO the talk plan we already have. With most carriers, even if you have a data plan for your phone, if you want to use an air card, you have to buy additional plan. Enter the concept of "tethering".

Making the Connection
If you have a smart phone or data phone or whatever you want to call it - one that can web surf and get/send email - it may have an option called TETHERING which lets it act as a modem for your laptop. When it's tethering, it brings in the same Internet data as it does when you're using the phone itself to surf but the phone stops surfing and this data all goes via a USB cable (or BlueTooth if you like) to your PC. Since you're already paying for the data plan, you only have to add (at least with Verizon) a $15 charge to let you tether. This beats $30 to $70 a month for a separate account. And it does work. But my experience with it at Verizon has been very frustrating.

Sometimes, phones can tether yet the carrier won't allow it. The reasoning is beyond me. This was true with my good ol' XV6700 phone on Verizon: thethering worked but if they found out you were tethering with it (guessing by data usage) they could drop you. To my knowledge this is no longer true of any current Verizon phones but according to an early June post at BoyGeniusReport this may still be true of AT&T and the iPhone:

We've also just heard that tethering will be 100% locked out at launch, but AT&T's in the process of putting together a $70/mo unlimited data and tethering plan. SMS and MMS will not be included in that plan, we're told.

A Look At The Plans
T-Mobile's data-only chart is a little confusing to me because it shows "additional minutes" for a data plan that says "Unlimited data transfer" in the $30 column. It's not clear to me what the differences are other than the more expensive plan has limited minutes. =:^| Regardless, it looks like $60 is the most you'd pay if you don't go over 5GB per month (and that's a LOT as long as you're not downloading lots of videos and music and YOU try to limit your email attachments).

Verizon gets, as mentioned in a previous posting, $30 to $50 per month for the data alone. If you decide to tether, the plan becomes $65 - unlimited monthly bytes for the phone and 5GB when tethering. According to my contact at Verizon, Data Babe (now Mrs. Data Babe) the differences between these plans (when not tethered) are that the cheaper one is for non-business people who aren't syncing Exchange, Blackberry, or Lotus Notes mail. They want the business users to subsidize the data costs, and this may be justified, but I can't grasp why someone with a consumer POP3 account, downloading every attachment that comes to them + MP3 and MPEG files, should pay less than a business customer using MS Exchange and having the box checked to leave attachments on the server. It's academic in this diatribe, though, because the $30/$50 pricing difference is only an of consequence if you aren't tethering - i.e. these prices only help us understand what it costs to have data on your phone and NOT tether it.

Sprint gets $60 a month for 5GB. Pretty much in line with the 2 above.

AT&T seems to have more plans which means more flexibility and more confusion. But, as of today, it appears that they're in the same price range as the others: 5GB for $60/mo.

It's Not Useful If It Doesn't Work
I was tethering with my old Verizon Treo and it worked OK. It was sort of a pain to get going at times but it worked. My new Samsung Omnia is a different story. One bennie of the Omnia is that it gets the much faster EVDO-RevA data rate than the last series of smart phones and air cards - but at what cost? It worked fine initially but eventually stopped. I'd do a Hard Rest on my phone (meaning another hour to get it all reprogrammed again) and it would tether for a few days then stop again. Verizon support and Verizon's Data Babe thought it was my laptop - indeed, the amazing Mrs. Babe spent her lunch hour with me and got my PC tethered again. She brought her own Omnia and it worked OK too. But a few days later things stopped again. I subsequently called Verizon again and, after an hour, the data rep decided it's not me or my laptop, but the phone. One thing I did that many do NOT do is to use Bluetooth as well as USB to tether and we're thinking that using both eventually corrupts the internal modem drivers or something. I have, today, done another Hard Reset and will run it without Bluetooth tethering and will report the results. But, if something is supposed to work, it should work. Here's how it manifests itself:

* I connect the phone via USB. We know it's not a USB problem because the laptop goes binkbonk and the modem settings change showing the modem attached to a USB port
* When I click on the connection, VZ Access Manager software says dialing. It must have found something it liked. Eventually it times out and says "There was a hardware failure in the modem (or other connecting device)".
* I did a Hard Reset of the phone and once the phone boots up, after some finagling, I get it to tether BUT NOW the laptop no longer finds the storage device drivers that worked, just moments ago, with the same phone and laptop.

No problem. I've got nothing else to do...

I've Got A Feeling I'm Not The Only One
The Worlds Greatest Consumer has the same phone and after I set him up with tethering for a road trip he complained of having to reboot his phone each time he used the tether.  What's that about?   From what I can tell, it all boils down to crappy software and crappy hardware.  The phone companies are churning out so much new product at such an accelerated rate that their customers have become de facto beta testers......except that they charge us for the privilege.  Imagine spending this much time getting your car to function? 

Any Other Omnia Users Had the Same Experience?
I was given the email address of a data services manager at Verizon. If any other UCAN.org readers have had the same problems, please post as much here so I can send him a summary. Maybe we can get this problem fixed. Me? I'm ready to toss the Omnia and get an HTC Touch Pro-with ITS attendant set of problems.

Keywords: omnia, tethering, tether, cellular, data, plans, air card, aircard, mobile phone, wireless