Wireless services blocking free Android tethering apps

Using an Android smart phone as a wireless modem for your laptop or tablet is about to get more expensive for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon subscribers. The three major carriers have begun blocking access to free or low-cost tethering apps—programs that allow other devices to tap into a smart phone's wireless Internet connections.

Several websites have reported that when customers of those wireless carriers try to download these apps—including PDAnet, Wireless Tether, and MyWi—from the Google Marketplace, they get a message that reads, "This item is not available on your carrier." Without access to the tethering apps, subscribers must add on their wireless carrier's tethering services, at an additional cost of about $20 to $30 a month.

Sprint, for now, remains the only U.S. wireless carrier that has not blocked access to tethering apps in Google's Android Marketplace.

Google told website Fierce Broadband Wireless that the apps were made unavailable to wireless subscribers at the request of those carriers. The reason: Such applications violated the ToS (terms of service) subscribers agree to when they sign up for a wireless data plan.

Several tech websites note that the free wireless apps can be "side-loaded"—downloaded and installed from other sources such as websites or Amazon's app store. But even with these free tethering apps, subscribers could indeed be violating their ToSes and may incur overage charges if they exceed their carrier's monthly data cap.

This move to circumvent Android tethering apps has rankled some tech enthusiasts. James Kendirck at ZDNet opined:

While we'd like to think that when we pay for a monthly data plan, unlimited or capped, that we are getting a 'bucket of data' to use as desired the carriers have a much different view.... These carrier agreements all have a clause buried in them that makes it clear that the carrier will monitor the data usage, and in cases they feel the customer is using more than her fair share can shut them off. This cut-off can happen even if the cap has not been breached by the customer.

Others, such as Daniel Ionescu at PC World, remark that the blocking move isn't surprising:

As millions more buy data-hungry smartphones every year, carriers' networks are constantly under pressure—and capped data plans and tethering charges are attempts to keep the network strain under control for the time being.

What do you think?

Tethering apps 'blocked' in Android Market [CNet]
Verizon's Android tethering block: What really happened and why [Computer World]
Android Tethering Free Ride is Over [PC World]
Are AT&T, Verizon blocking the Android Wireless Tether app? [Fierce Broadband Wireless]
I told you the tethering police were coming, and now they are here [ZDNet]

—Paul Eng