Comments on: Twelve Questions I Still Have About the T-Mobile G1 and Android

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By: Harry McCracken

Harry McCracken — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:47:04 +0000

Hi, Jason, thanks for the thoughts. I should be clear that in both cases, I know that there are tradeoffs for the carriers–and I’m willing to pay. Carriers offer tethering plans for other phones, at an extra cost, so there’s clearly no fundamental problem with doing so; it’s just that T-Mobile doesn’t do so for the G1, and Apple doesn’t do so for the iPhone.

Meanwhile, AT&T has cheerfully unlocked a couple of phones I’ve bought from them, and I bought an HTC TyTN II–essentially an unlocked version of the AT&T Tilt. I haven’t heard whether HTC plans to sell an unlocked Dream (aka the G1) or not.

I think of openness as creating products that let their owners do with them what they want to the greatest degree possible. With both tethering and unlocking, I think it’s possible to do so…and charging more for the ability is fine with me, since tethering involves bandwidth issues and unlocking negates the value to the carrier of subsidy pricing.

–Harry

By: Jason D

Jason D — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:37:52 +0000

I don’t get the connection here. How does tethering and unlocking make something feel more open? Specifically tethering? Tethering tends to take up more bandwidth and tax a network considerably. That’s why AT&T banned it. Tethering is a sneaky shortcut. Rather than buying a card for your laptop, and paying the fees associated with taxing the network resources more, people want to circumvent that by piggybacking on their phone. Don’t blame Google/T-Mobile for not allowing an option that’s underhanded and at least one other carrier has outright banned.
Unlocking wouldn’t make sense. As a tradeoff for taking the plunge, T-Mobile has every right to keep the G1 tied to their network, at least for the time being. Which is the case. They’re a service carrier, after all.