I was just wondering if someone could help me out here.

I would like to use my Motorola Droid to connect my desktop computer to the net wirelessly. I've heard that if you tether your computer without a plan on your carrier (Verizon, etc.) they may end up charging you for it. However, If I were to turn my network access off and connect via wi-fi, would I be charged?

I don't think they would because I wouldn't even be using their network, but I just want to be sure before I try. Plus, cell phone companies have a long history of ridiculous charges and screwing the customer.

Thanks.

 

Hi,

I tether. I've tethered with a couple of different phones on a couple of different plans.

You are correct that if you connect to the droid via cable then use the wifi to access they probably won't care - but realize that if you put a wifi NIC card in your desktop it would accomplish the same thing, right?

Verizon wireless polices their network much more carefully than some of the other carriers, IDK if they would notice you were tethered or not on their 3G network - they might if you were pulling in that much data.

My recollection is that Verizon does not allow tethering...they want you to buy a separate air card, or at least they did a couple of years ago, why I went to Sprint. Sprint allows tethering if you pay for it, or if you do it anyways, I've never been cut off or charged or gotten a letter etc.

I currently have tether, without paying extra, on Sprint and T-Mobile, Sprint offers it as a service and T-Mobile does not, they want you to have a seperate air card plan.

BTW, if you have sprint "Everything for $99" this does NOT include the tether, they also limit the amount of bandwidth you can use when paying for the tether, another reason I did not. Sprint Air Card, unlimited data = $60/month, Sprint tether on any phone except Pre, $30/month but limited bandwidth.

wow...that was a mouthful

 

verizon said they might have tethering in the future, but for now there are tutorials online that shows you how to tether with droid, i havnt tried it myself.

 

u can use that phone to teathet but Verizon will know and charge you $30 a month for teather. They will also add the $30 data plan.

 

From what I've read, if you root (jailbreak) your droid, you can use tethering natively in the OS. Haven't tried it yet, just doing some research .

Yes, but I don't want to go buy the card if I'm rarely ever going to use it and I already have my droid.

Thanks for the help

 

^this

We use Blackberry's here, added tethering for about $15/mo @ 5GB data to the users phone plan. Otherwise a la carte data use wasn't authorized on handsets.

With VZW you also have to use their VZAccess manager software, so if they aint made the software for the device, yer almost SOL on tethering.

With Sprint (up until mid 2008 or so) I could tether my Palm Treo & any of the Treo's we had as company phones. Came in handy when users commuted via Amtrack to/from Sac. But then one day Sprint locked it up and started charging for wireless Broadband.

 

But if I use tethering on a wi-fi connection and turn off my verizon network access(3g, etc), how would they even know? Wouldn't I just be using my droid as a wireless bridge? Also, as far as I can tell, you don't need any extra software once the droid is rooted. Your computer just sees it as a usb network adapter (correct me if I'm wrong).


Also I have a semi-related question, and I don't want to start a new thread about it.

Basically I'm planning on going with some friends to Japan later this year. One of the guys at the verizon store said that I could turn off all my connections and use wifi to surf the net while I'm there without being charged for data. I was wondering if my GPS signal would work there as well.

To test it out, I put my phone into airplane mode and enabled gps and wifi. My phone usually tells me that I'm at my house but with airplane mode on it's saying that I'm a few blocks away. Even if it's off by a few blocks while I'm there, it would still be usefull if I can use it for free. Not sure about this one because gps is a feature built into the phone, not part of my data/calling plan.

 

If you are gonna tether your Droid and dont want to be charged for it, Root Access your phone. But be damn sure of what you are doing if you are gonna go that route.

Learn how here

 

Anyone know about tethering on AT&T?

 

iPhone 3gs tethering here. I still have no charges because there is no plan for tethering iPhones. It's pretty dam fast! Jailbroken of course.

 

^dude, how? I tried tethering my 3gs and can't get it to do anything.

 

Yeah you'd have to rootkit a Droid or jailbreak an iPhone to get them to tether I'd imagine.

 

iPhone 3.1.2
jailbreak
cydia> sources> add > sinful iPhone repo(i forgot the address)
install "enable tethering 3gs"
reboot
settings> network> enable tethering.
=]

 

ATT has plans for tethering, I think all of ATT smart phones and BB tether.

IIRC, the ATT cost for tether is $15/month and that is at 5GB/month and $30 gives you 50G/month...something like that.

 

USB Wifi NIC is as little as $20...and it's way easier to use than what you are trying to do, IMHO. You'll also have to root your phone, kind of a lot of work to avoid buying a WiFi adapter?