How can you buy an unlocked phone, though? Except for the N1 through the developer connection? I am guessing that tbray uses a N1. So do I and most other Android developers I know.

Which means we are all living in a fantasy land. We have a good experience, whereas life for the people we told to buy an Android phone will suck.

The key is "locked phones they sell for cheap". Gotta be paid for somehow.

You can buy an unlocked phone easily; I got mine at eXpansys. Be prepared for a shock if you don't know what a phone actually costs...

What you got by paying full price was a network-unlocked phone but it will still be locked when it comes to the software running inside it. Unlocking so you can run your own kernel will void the warranty.

If all you want is a root shell to the existing software, "Universal Android Root" seems to be the tool to use and won't void your warranty. It's still a hack and not something you get out of the box.

The only phone I know of that actually seems to come unlocked is the Nokia N900 where you can get a root shell out of the box and probably also swap the kernel for your own without voiding the warranty (not sure).

Universal Android Root seems to be the best answer for now. It's as easy to install as any non-market Android app. Of course, it may get disabled by OTA updates.

Barnacle seems to be the wifi tethering app of choice, as it's free and works on almost any hardware.

I'd really like to see Google start using their certification process to stop telcos from pulling this crap. Data is data. You're a dumb pipe. Get over it.

It's very easy to buy unlocked phones in Germany and, from what I hear, most of Europe. Even data roaming prices within Europe have come down to very agreeable levels. I'm with O2 Germany, and IIRC I can use data roaming anywhere in Europe and never pay more than 60e a month for it, which seems very fair to me.

Easy solution for iPhone - jailbreakme.com then purchase MyWi through RockApp. For $20 you get a wifi hotspot. You just need to be careful to not go over your AT&T data plan cap.

I wonder if it's possible to write an open source hotspot app and then just deploy it to your own phone via developer signing. It's $100/year but I'd think there's a fair intersection between those who'd use a tethering app and those who are already developers and there's no risk of bricking.

Although it certainly isn't the same as MyWi, iProxy sets up a SOCKS proxy through which you can send your web traffic:

http://wiki.github.com/tcurdt/iProxy/

If you wouldn't otherwise sign up for the developer program, you'd probably be better off just getting a mifi-like device. In the UK you can pay as little as £5/month for airtime and around £50 for the device.

More flexible and less confusing, too.

There is very little risk of bricking in general--you can restore even from DFU mode.

Last time I checked, MyWi had to use MobileSubstrate extensions, which inject code into running processes. Obviously, a legitimate app can't do that, so it may not be possible.

You can also edit the carrier plist to enable the native USB/Bluetooth tethering for your computer.

http://www.appfaction.com/blog/2010/08/how-to-native-tether-...

> without considerable deep-packet inspection, how can you tell that there are other computers gatewaying

Uhm... TTL (IPv4)/hop limit (IPv6)? Not accurate but seeing TTL of 254, 127, 63, 59 or 31 means that there's quite high probability that sender is a router, not packet's originator.

Even simpler, looking at the user agent string. All the mobile networks I've used use HTTP proxies (transparent or explicit) to hugely decrease image quality; the JPEG artifacts are atrocious.

I guess the marginally harder problem would be linking together the proxy with the authentication of the connecting user, to let authorized tethering users through. Perhaps they could use a different proxy via a different APN, or similar techniques.

> Even simpler, looking at the user agent string.

This would catch a lot of false positives. For example, I use Atomic Web Browser on my iPad and iPhone - it lets me change my user agent string because some websites try to redirect you to a slimmed-down mobile version, and I might want to get to the full version of the website. So it is quite often that I actually change my user agent string to show desktop Safari instead of mobile.

Unfortunately it depends also on the hardware. The Milestone and afaik the droid are very unlikely to support the official 2.2 tethering as the Wifi chip does not support AP mode.

But you can get easily tethering on a the milestone (or many other 2.1/1.6 devices) with the adhoc mode. Root your phone (you just have to intsall one application nowadays) and install the open source wireless-ether <http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/>; package

USB tethering works on the Droid though. Unfortunately, using it first takes you to a Verizon signup page where they make you pay for the privilege.

Why just not to pipe all the traffic through SSH proxy (-D) to avoit user agent filtering? Or do they also block connections to other ports than 80?

(Telcoms are really ripping off people in some contries. I pay 14 EUR per month for unlimited, uncapped, unfiltered 3G data for three(!) devices.)

They do not block, just shape. My mobile operator (O2) shapes everything but http, so with ssh tunnelling or ssl-based vpn, things get much slower.

Seems like you didn't read the article past the "The answer is obvious but only once you see it" sentence.

Android portable hot spot feature is more or less the only thing (together with the better notifications) that is preventing me from selling my N1 in favor of an iPhone 4...

As another commenter noted, it's possible to get this functionality on iPhone if you jailbreak and purchase a tethering app. There are apps that will let you run a wifi hotspot, but I personally just spent a few bucks on an app which would allow me to use the iPhone's native tethering, which is very nice, automatic, etc.

I really feel for the economic (and more) problems Americans and Canadians have to endure in this context just to acquire something that should be natural to every "mobile" person on the planet: easy and unhindered communication.

I really, really hope Europe won't become the same hell.

I really hope not. But they are trying.

Every time I hear a story like this I feel like I read it as "run far from this madness!" and the local telecoms read it as "still some way to go, still some way to go".

In the end anywhere in the world there's never more than a few mobile providers, so I wouldn't be surprised as eventually they settled down in a nice oligopoly.

While Europe has mostly had good contracts, it is very easy for them to stop doing that. Because mobile technology is advancing so quickly the can always say they are keeping the same offer but charging you for the extra.

If Europe is saved, we'll have to thank the European Union, I think. Not sure how long it will last though.

I find it interesting that you say "Europe" in this context. As someone who travels around Europe a fair amount, I've researched mobile phone tariffs in various countries, and the differences can be staggering - for example, an order of magnitude difference for the cheapest prepaid data tariff seems pretty common, calls and SMS vary wildly as well. I haven't analysed it in depth, but there aren't any obvious correlations with population density, size, GDP/capita, etc. as you might expect. Not even the number of network operators (=competition) seems relevant.

I think you are probably right. My conclusions were mostly from what I experienced or heard... i.e. very anecdotal.

First I should have been clear that by Europe I meant EU. And also I still think there's a lot of bad tariffs here too. I haven't checked in many countries but the 2-3 I've been to or checked had similar deals (though in Italy for example pay as you go is way more popular than contract, and in the UK is the opposite).

But I think some of the better deals may have been the result of regulatory pressure. For example every other year the EU commission sets lower prices for inter-state roaming.

I tether with my iPhone on Rogers in Canada without jailbreaking and without paying extra. I have friends on Telus and Bell that do the same. Don't lump us with the poor service of AT&T in the US.

One of the problems in the UK is that it's hard to find an unlimited internet plan. Nearly all the networks place a 500MB limit, which is very easy to go over if you use tethering apps. It can end up costing an absolute fortune.

While there's no truly 'unlimited' packages, my standard data with T-Mobile is 1GB, and you can usually find packages for more if you need it.

If you're using your phone's internet a lot, it's probably better value to get a USB dongle or mifi device. You can get a 3GB/month contract from Three for £10 or £15.

I'm visiting the UK from India, and I can confirm that it is not just hard - it is impossible to get an unlimited data plan. Among all the service providers, there are only two that even advertise one, and even that says "3 GB fair usage per month" (wtf?!) in the fine print.