Android Market Withdraws Tethering Apps

Most free or low-cost tethering apps formerly available at the Android Market now have been removed from the Android Market, meaning that AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile Android smart phones will not be able to use them.

Easy Tether, Internet Sharer, Klink, PDAnet and Tether for Android are among the apps observers say no longer are available. Users can still install free tethering apps on rooted phones, or from another source other than the official Android Market.

The consumer interest in such apps is obvious: it allows them to use the smart phone data plan to connect other devices. Service providers of course sell service plans to connect PCs and other devices.

The perceived fairness of access plans has much to do with expectations. Even "capped" fixed-line plans offer 150 Gbps to 250 Gbps worth of monthly consumption, at a time when most users probably use several Gbps a month, across all PCs, tablets and other devices used inside a home. Wireless plans are sold differently, on a per-device basis, with varying caps and price plans that tend to top out at 5 Gbps a month for any single device.

Sprint is the exception, offering unlimited 4G usage plus 5 Gbps of 3G usage each month for HTC Evo and similar devices. Users seem to accept as fair an allotment of 150 Gbps to 250 Gbps at a fixed location, supporting multiple devices, for possibly $60 a month. Wireless plans often cost $60 for a 5-Gbps plan for a single smartphone.

That's a big difference, and so the interest in tethering is not surprising. Mobile executives often point out that the cost of delivering bandwidth over a mobile network is more costly than on a fixed network, and there is almost-complete agreement with that general principle.

How plans might change in the future is not clear, but it is clear that mobile users already have learned to use Wi-Fi connections for tablets and smart phones, instead of their mobile usage buckets, when Wi-Fi is available. Also, the typical mobile user simply does not consume as much data as when using a PC. These days, it remains an unusual smart phone user that actually consumes more than hundreds of megabytes a month from a smart phone. Tablets represent a mixed case.

And, of course, everyone expects usage to climb, over time. "Fairness" is a moving target.

Android Tethering Free Ride is Over | PCWorld