Say goodbye to free tethering with sprint ev-do

[Yankees368]

Well, it was only a matter of time until this happend:

"Registration failure. your pcs vision username and/or password may be incorrect. Please try again. Note: Repeated entries of an invalid password during a 24-hour period will result in a 20-minute suspension. A suspended vision username may not be used until the suspension expires, even when submitted with the correct password. If this problem persists, you may need to contact sprint."

Sprint is now enforcing tethering on ev-do devices, you now must pay for this feature.

[Yankees368]

HURRAY! Less than a day into Sprint kicking us off EVDO tethering, there is a way around it:


Modem NAI Disable Procedure
To disable the secondary Modem NAI, go to Menu > Settings > Display, and press 0 to access a hidden menu. Enter 040793 as the security code. At the following menu, scroll to Toggle NAI and chose Off Modem NAI, followed by OK. Then power the phone off immediately. When you turn the phone back on, Modem NAI will be disabled.

[jrip]

This will only work until the next firmwar update is released. But do not worry I hear there are a few permanent hack's in the works to solve this problem.

[jimwayda]

Tethering is stealing!!

I have an EVDO laptop card and pay $60.00 for unlimited service. Why do you think that you should get data services for free, especially high speed data services? It is about time that Sprint shut-off this service.

[Yankees368]

Well, I already pay for a voice plan and data plan and together with my 3 lines, we pay over $110 a month. It's not free.

[Steven2420]

Originally Posted by Yankees368

Well, I already pay for a voice plan and data plan and together with my 3 lines, we pay over $110 a month. It's not free.

Way to go Yanks, we pay enough for all this crap. They have no right to charge double for things. I pay for unlimited internet, and all the bells and whistles, and that cost me $130 per month. People should be righteous in their homes, not on boards!

[jimwayda]

Unlimited Internet on a phone or a PDA is much different than unlimited Internet on a Laptop because you can download gigabytes of data on the laptop. You are most likely paying for unlimited internet on a phone or PDA, not on a laptop.

Originally Posted by Steven2420

Way to go Yanks, we pay enough for all this crap. They have no right to charge double for things. I pay for unlimited internet, and all the bells and whistles, and that cost me $130 per month. People should be righteous in their homes, not on boards!

[Steven2420]

Originally Posted by jimwayda

Unlimited Internet on a phone or a PDA is much different than unlimited Internet on a Laptop because you can download gigabytes of data on the laptop. You are most likely paying for unlimited internet on a phone or PDA, not on a laptop.

Jim,

I have NO desire to get into a flame war with you. You are assuming allot. When you look up unlimited in the dictionary, it says this...

Main Entry: un·lim·it·ed
Pronunciation: -'li-m&-t&d
Function: adjective
1 : lacking any controls : UNRESTRICTED
2 : BOUNDLESS, INFINITE
3 : not bounded by exceptions : UNDEFINED
- un·lim·it·ed·ly adverb

Please read number 3 carefully. As quickly as technology is advancing, we will all be able to download 100's of MB's on our phones real soon. I can download over 5MB per day easily. Are you some sort of champion for the Cell Companies. So, tell me, just because I pay for electricity at my house and office, if I plug my laptop into a plug at the airport, they should send me a bill for that. If I download a 12MB file waiting for an overpriced flight, hoping I don't fly into a building, they should bill me for that. Please get real, unlimited is unlimited, NOT BOUNDED BY EXCEPTIONS!!!!

[Yankees368]

I tether maybe once or twice a month during the event that my LAN goes down, and it is a very valuable asset. Unlimited means unlimited. If sprint dosnet want you to tether, they shouldnt even give the option in the phones. The part that I dont understand about your agrument is that I am infact paying for it, more than you!

[muzzin]

I completely agree with Steve for a number of reasons. First, the US is ranked 24th in the world for broadband deployment. The last time I checked Qualcomm and RIM own about all the major patents on cellular data technology in the world, yet Korea was the first to deploy CDMA technology and now they can surf wirelessly at 10s to 100s of MB per second - 5 years before US. There simply is no way to argue that we haven't been screwed here in the US by the telecom companies. Plus our laws are set-up to prevent competition.

Now personally I don't like to cheat, but it's not like the telecoms aren't begging us to do it with the exorbitant fees. And as far as getting great customer service for those high fees..... well in most cases it's a complete joke.

For example I just fired Cingular for terrible call drops and no loyalty discounts. For signing a new two year agreement, they'll discount the phone. Anyone with a brain can do the math, the cost of the phone is in the contract. So I get nothing for signing up for the two years. How about we do what it takes as customers to force the telecoms into the Eurpoean model where you buy a phone then get the service separately. If we had real competition here one of the major companies here would have done that long ago.

Second, How about getting phones with features/services (and limitations) we want. I just purchased an HTC Mogul. My intent was to not use the PCS network but use Wi-Fi only for data. Per Sprint's admission you can shut off data in a PLAIN phone's settings but there is no way to shut it off on the PDA......NONE. Oh yeah you might be able to temporarily trick it, but for me this lasted about 10 minutes. Then the PDA actually reset the settings for the Sprint Network after I had just deleted them. Then I changed the dialing rules (per Sprint's instructions) to add a '1' to all phone numbers to fool the device to dial the wrong number. That didn't work. Then I deleted the entire Sprint Network settings from the configuration screen. Guess what.......It came right back. So after getting charged $11 for less than a week of unintended data usage with more to come in my next bill, I have very little sympathy for the Wireless Ho's.

BTW I have more than 20 years of computing experience and if I can't disable it, and my friend the computer analyst can't figure out - Joe user is going to get hosed.

I did find out today that Sprint can internally set accounts to NO-IP or BASEIP which shuts off all data on the phone (apparently with the exception of text messaging.)

If anyone knows how to cut the legs off the phone's data dialing I'd sure appreciate a heads up.

I will be looking for registry entries that can decapitate the data functions.

Best wishes

-Hed

Originally Posted by Steven2420

Jim,

I have NO desire to get into a flame war with you. You are assuming allot. When you look up unlimited in the dictionary, it says this...

Main Entry: un·lim·it·ed
Pronunciation: -'li-m&-t&d
Function: adjective
1 : lacking any controls : UNRESTRICTED
2 : BOUNDLESS, INFINITE
3 : not bounded by exceptions : UNDEFINED
- un·lim·it·ed·ly adverb

Please read number 3 carefully. As quickly as technology is advancing, we will all be able to download 100's of MB's on our phones real soon. I can download over 5MB per day easily. Are you some sort of champion for the Cell Companies. So, tell me, just because I pay for electricity at my house and office, if I plug my laptop into a plug at the airport, they should send me a bill for that. If I download a 12MB file waiting for an overpriced flight, hoping I don't fly into a building, they should bill me for that. Please get real, unlimited is unlimited, NOT BOUNDED BY EXCEPTIONS!!!!

[dkcharger]

I'm trying to tether my Lap top to my Sprint Touch Pro, I was wondering how you do this? I do have an unlimited data plan. Currently I am able to tether by opening a PIE window prior to connecting w/ wmwifirouter. The only problem is that I get disconnected every few minutes.

I found another thread where a specific dll file was deleted from the registry to fix this:

Originally Posted by luv2chill View Post
OK I've poked into things a bit more and yes it seems Sprint is up to no good in regards to tethering. Those of you running Sprint ROMs should remove the following registry value:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\InternetSharing]
"Extension"="rilphone.dll"

This seemed to work for many people but there is no rilphone.dll in wm 6.1 in its place is isext.dll. Someone suggested I delete it but I'm skeptical. what do you think? How do you tether?

[SmArTeStChIlD421]

i think i have to agree with Jim on this one......

the thing is though Sprint should advertise better.......like unlimited phone data.......laptop data extra

it is very difficult to download gigabytes of data on a phone but on a laptop that has limewire running.....peace of cake

the point is when they declare unlimited in the plan details they are planning and building their network for unlimited phone usage.......no unlimited laptop usage......of course i do agree with Yanks that $60 is severely overpriced considering the speed........i got 3 Mb/s DSL at home for $30 and Sprint is giving my 1.5 Mb/s tops for $60.....thats a rip

[AnthroMatt]

My problem is that Sprint won't even allow customers to add phone as modem to ANY of the family plans they currently offer if those family plans also include data...even if it is not an "everything" plan.

I have 4 lines on a talk/message/data share plan and I cannot add PAM to any line...for any amount of money. And I will not buy a mobile card and tie myself down to a 2 year contract for mobile broadband, so as a result, Sprint is losing potential imcome.

[SmArTeStChIlD421]

yeah that's ridiculous........

[WirelessBeachBum]

The original thread is a couple of years old... but I guess not allot of things have changed. Initially Sprint was planning on controlling tethering via the user name and password model, however when 1X first launched the details killed them and the saw they were losing lots of money on tethering. It's always been about the revenue, and protecting network integrity... for every carrier... They are all for-profit companies, and I'm sure they are probably just paying off the initial 1X upgrades, and will start to work on the EVDO and REV A upgrade bill's over the next decade or so... I don't understand why people think a service like REV A Evdo is not worth the $60 they ask for it.

[badtux]

I just tried to sign up for a new Palm Centro. There was no more separate voice and data plans -- they wanted to force me to purchase a combined "phone and data" plan. And there was no option for tethering. I tried a few other phones and got the same general result: No more tethering.

It appears Sprint has given up on tethering altogether and is no longer offering it. I wonder what is going to happen to old customers? Will their tethering be turned off as their contracts expire?

[SmArTeStChIlD421]

if people keep resigning the contracts they cant turn it off but if people let their contract run out and they go month to month then yeah i think AT&T can do whatever they want

[badtux]

Yep, looks like Sprint has disabled tethering on existing accounts that had tethering once the contract runs out. Just tested it on such an account, nope, no tethering anymore. Looking on their web site, searching for "tethering", finds it only under "business services" and says "call representative".

Goodbye, Sprint. Hello, iPhone. If I am only allowed to use my phone to access the Internet (no tethering), at least the iPhone has a good web browser rather than the cr*p on Windows Mobile, Crackberry, or Palm.

[SmArTeStChIlD421]

ehhhh Crackberry does a pretty good job actually....it's Internet Explorer Mobile that sucks

[budney]

Originally Posted by SmArTeStChIlD421

ehhhh Crackberry does a pretty good job actually....it's Internet Explorer Mobile that sucks

That's why I use Skyfire & Opera. Opera now comes standard on the Diamond & Touch Pro