Mobile tethering, the fight between carriers and consumers
Cell phones and similar mobile devices were still in their relative infancy in the mid-1980s. In the fall of 1983, the first commercial cellular service launched in earnest.
By the spring of 1984, companies were already hatching plans to connect modems to the network.
Fast forward to practical communications. The concept of tethering was a known entity by the mid-2000s, when the first iPhone came out. In fact, numerous smartphones, such as the various BlackBerry devices, offered it as an option.
Not that you would know it if you were an iPhone user. For the first couple of years, it wasn’t even an option. And it wasn’t because Apple was being stingy about support, either. It was an AT&T problem.
No matter if you were running on EDGE or 3G, your fancy phone was unable to share its connection with other devices in a vendor-sanctioned way. This phone was in the midst of changing your life, but good luck trying to siphon the Jesus phone’s connection for your personal needs.
This was in part AT&T’s strategy for avoiding undue stress on its network, which was being tested by data-hungry iPhone users. It was frustrating as an iPhone user. But it was also a sign that the telecom giant underestimated the power of data.
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