Pat Anderson
New member
OK, any users of PDANet out there? Take a quick look at the thread "Adventures in Tethering BlackBerry Storm to MacBook," where Jim mentions getting PDANet instead of paying the monthly tethering charge. There is in fact a version of PDANet for the BlackBerry Storm. This is not Mac specific or BlackBerry specific though. I formerly used PDANet on my City-provided Treo on Cingular / ATT,to tether a Palm OS phone to a Windoze laptop. PDANet works with PCs and Macs, and there versions for many brands of phones. So I know that PDANet in fact works.
My question though is simple: doesn't using PDANet violate most carriers' terms of service relating to tethering? Verizon now requires a $30 a month Broadband Access plan if you are going to tether a phone to a computer (it used to be only $15 a month, but being the greedy bastards that they are, they upped it - when in fact it doesn't add any more data transfer than you can already do without the tethering plan if you are willing to be confined to the small screen / keypad on the phone).
Is the theory here that to the carrier, PDANet data transfers look exactly like data transfers to/from the phone itself, and they will "never know"? On the other hand, you would think if PDANet facilitated something illegal of violating terms of service, the carriers would be all over it to shut it down.
Anybody have any thoughts on this?
My question though is simple: doesn't using PDANet violate most carriers' terms of service relating to tethering? Verizon now requires a $30 a month Broadband Access plan if you are going to tether a phone to a computer (it used to be only $15 a month, but being the greedy bastards that they are, they upped it - when in fact it doesn't add any more data transfer than you can already do without the tethering plan if you are willing to be confined to the small screen / keypad on the phone).
Is the theory here that to the carrier, PDANet data transfers look exactly like data transfers to/from the phone itself, and they will "never know"? On the other hand, you would think if PDANet facilitated something illegal of violating terms of service, the carriers would be all over it to shut it down.
Anybody have any thoughts on this?