Ever since Verizon announced their own iPhone 4 last month, those of us who have been with AT&T all these years nashed their teeth when they saw Apple unveil the Personal Hotspot feature, which turns your device into a MiFi. So when will this feature come to AT&T?
AppleInsider is reporting that, while AT&T has nothing to announce about Apple’s new Personal Hotspot feature today, they’re at least working with the iPhone 4 maker to get the feature on their network.
As you may recall, Personal Hotspot was first shown last month at the Verizon iPhone 4 announcement, with the CDMA handset running iOS 4.2.5. Review devices got a slight bump to iOS 4.2.6, but it appears that Personal Hotspot will be rolled out to everyone with the forthcoming iOS 4.3 update.
That is, assuming that your local carrier will support it. Long-suffering AT&T customers will recall the endless wait for MMS and tethering capabilities while those features were available in most of the rest of the world, so the question now is, how long will it take the carrier that everyone loves to hate to support Personal Hotspot?
“All I can say at this time is that we’re working with Apple,” says Seth Bloom, a spokesman for AT&T.
This week, the carrier announced a change to their existing tethering plans for smartphone users -- instead of $20 just for the privilege of tethering, you’ll now get an extra 2GB of data on top of the existing 2GB that’s costing you $25 per month (tethering isn’t available for those of you grandfathered in from the old $30 per month unlimited data plan).
Curiously, AT&T didn’t mention the iPhone in their announcement, although it’s widely believed that iOS 4.3 will hit in mid-February. With the renewed pressure on AT&T thanks to Verizon’s iPhone 4 release on February 10, now would be a good time for them to add Personal Hotspot support as soon as it’s available…
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