Jason Coe at Appmodo is becoming the Rob Enderle of iPhone Tethering rumors.
Here is his latest post
AT&T CEO Says Tethering Coming Soon for iPhone
POSTED BY JASON COE ON NOVEMBER 10, 2009 AT 2:10 PM | HARDWARE, NEWS, IPHONE
Last Thursday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fransisco, AT&T Wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega made the announcement that tethering for the iPhone 3G is coming “soon”, although the word “soon” was quite defined last month in one of our previous reports. The comment was also reiterated by an AT&T spokesman yesterday morning. The announcement comes as an AT&Tempt to build hype for the service as AT&T continues to upgrade and patch their network for continued 3G coverage.
No details were leaked yet regarding price, but judging by AT&T’s BlackBerry model tethering plans, we can expect pricing to be around $60 each month, something we’ve been saying since July. De La Vega also stated that the company and Apple are “working together to bring the functionality to the iPhone”, however the feature can already be accessed by jailbreaking your iPhone.
At the end of an article is a link to Macworld
Sounds good, right?
Here are some of the flaws:
The link to Macworld is to an article from November 2008. In case you have amnesia, it is currently November 2009. The “[l]ast Thursday at the Web 2.0 summit” was November 6th, 2008.
Coe links to his article last month (see also here) where he reiterated that tethering was not coming until 2010. What made him sure that tethering wasn’t coming until 2010? Because an AT&T representative would not give a specific date. Is that evidence? No, that’s a guess. Could he be right? Sure. But he doesn’t have anything real to base this on.
Jason has consistently claimed that AT&T is going to charge $55-$60 a month on top of your existing iPhone data plan for tethering.
Here is what AT&T had to say (on the record) about the cost:
“There are a lot of reports out there, but wanted you guys to know that rumors of $55 tethering plan on top of an unlimited data plan are false. We’ll have more news to share when the iPhone tethering option is closer to launch.”
Coe continues to claim that “his source” says differently. He has previously described this source as “an undisclosed reputable AT&T employee”. The first bit of “insider information” this source gave?
EXCLUSIVE: A source with AT&T informed Appmodo today that MMS for the iPhone will be coming mid July, not “the end of the summer” as previously reported. June 17th, Appmodo
As we all know, the date ended up being just after the end of summer.
Today Coe cites “AT&T’s BlackBerry model tethering plans” as an indicator that the costs will be “around $60/month”.
So I took about two minutes to Google for AT&T BlackBerry tethering plans, and found this page
That chart very clearly shows “Smartphone Personal: $30.00″ and “Smartphone Personal plus Tethering: $60.00.”
iPhone 3G/3GS customers are already paying the same $30/month for unlimited data. If we are going to use AT&T’s Blackberry Tethering costs as a guide for what iPhone Tethering might cost, it would be $60 total per month not $60 in addition to the $30 you are already paying which is the line that Coe keeps repeating.
I don’t know why Coe keeps insisting on this “additional $60/month” cost, but there is absolutely no evidence for it.
Nor is there any evidence that tethering is coming “soon”…
In fact, if Coe had read today’s report from Macworld instead of last year’s, he would have seen this:
AT&T Monday reiterated its plans to offer tethering on the iPhone, but again gave no date when that might happen— more than a year after the carrier first said tethering would be coming “soon.”
Asked just when that would be, a spokesman said in an e-mail: “We plan to offer tethering on the iPhone but have not announced a date.”
Emphasis added, as Macworld goes on to link to their article from a year ago quoting Ralph de la Vega.
I don’t know when tethering is coming. I do know that so far, Jason Coe at Appmodo has been completely wrong with his predictions, and his source has been unreliable. If AT&T fails to deliver tethering by December 31st, he can claim that he correctly read the tea leaves of AT&T’s “non-statement” of when it was coming, but it will have been a guess… all they have said officially is “It’s coming, but we aren’t saying when.”
Update: Coe has now changed the link to point to Computerworld.com where the title of the page is “Tethering to iPhone still coming, AT&T says; no date set”. This is the source of the Macworld article I mentioned above. Coe has not changed the rest of the article to reflect the fact that he is referencing a quote from a year ago.
UPDATE: the above article has been taken down, and now points to a story about AT&T being sued for not providing MMS in some part of the USA.