This will be very useful and a much welcomed addition to the AT&T service as far as my family is concerned.

I cant wait to see tethering comparisons. So far it seems the iPhone 4 can tether for 4 hours and has a great way of preserving by turning off tethering 90 seconds after the last device disconnects. So far, the results from other devices have been excessively power hungry.

Quote:

Originally Posted by digitalclips

This will be very useful and a much welcomed addition to the AT&T service as far as my family is concerned.

As to this feature I hope Apple has it configured to run as a background task. That is I want the ability to run another app on the iPhone while it is serving as a WiFi hot spot. Admittedly I haven't read a lot of reviews but I haven't seen clear comments on this ability.

As to AT&Ts charging for this I wish they would simply wake up and charge by the GB of data transferred. Ten dollars for every 2GB isn't to bad but 4GB would be better. With apps like the Daily coming bandwidth usage will become an issue. I may not personally buy into the daily but I can see other publications I might be interested in on a weekly or monthly basis. It would only take a couple of these to blow a 2GB data allotment. More importantly apps like these are likely to be used away from hotspots.

The other thing this does is put a twist in my iPad 2 plans. Originally the intent was simply to go with a 3G or hopefully 4G model and put up with two accounts. Now I have to think a bit more about this. A WiFi hotspots could be a cheaper way to a higher performance iPad2. Unless of course Apple continues to put the GPS chip on the 3G card. At onetime I actually thought about dropping the iPhone and going with a 3G iPad2.

With all of this noise with respect to the 13th, how many think that this is the date for iPad2? That would be a fantastic surprise.

Personal Hotspot already works great on the GSM iPhone on AT&T's network. After installing iOS 4.3 (I am a registered developer) I saw the Hotspot option, but it was disabled. I added tethering to my AT&T account and immediately the Hotspot option became available on the phone. Probably what AT&T means is that they're looking for a way to screw their customers with the new Personal Hotspot feature. It works way too well right now.

Looking forward to the 10th!

this would be great for families traveling, i keep my iphone plugged in the kids have touch's so this is a win, its the details and how many can connect also att could advertise this as a family bonus because all survey's have said att is faster with data than vz, so sharing a higher rate works better
also i still want to multitask for gps, vlingo, etc.

now for the cost and how it affects those with unlimited data, or will they be throttled down.
it seems as the 10th rolls closer and closer we hear more from att about appealing to customers

i like att, i want a great deal when i upgrade my tired 3g to iP4

If history is repeated, at&t should be offering a hotspot feature sometime in 2012! And it won't be cheap!

AT&T will have to add a Personal Hotspot feature for the iPhone now that Verizon is doing it, and they will have to price it competitively.