Beware sprint terminating gprs capability

[ericthered]

I recently replaced my cell phone at a Sprint Store. When they provisioned the replacement phone, my GPRS capability stopped working on both of my Sprint cell phones and both of my GPS's. I have now confirmed that Sprint is phasing out GPRS and that any, and I mean ANY change in your equipment or Plan will cause GPRS (bluetooth tethering) to cease functioning.

What a BUMMER!

 

[canderson]

What they are screwing around with is called "tethering". This is where your second device uses the Bluetooth DUN (Dial-Up Networking) profile on your phone to act as a modem to the outside world.

Be aware that in making changes, they will likely dink with your plan. They are trying to limit the use of their wireless bandwidth with extra charges.

DUN (tethering) is no longer free (neither is the USB version), even when you have "unlimited data service", but should be available for about a $15/mo charge. When I changed phones a while back, I ran into the same thing. If you can tolerate the difference in rate plans, give them a call and see if you can get this added.

 

[ericthered]

Tethering Not Available

Can't be added to an individual plan, only a Corporate plan... it's gone away.

 

[canderson]

Muat have happened recently, although the number of plans that does?did offer it were quite limited. The Talk 450 and Talk 900 plans allowed for this as recently as December.

 

[offthegrid]

Check some of these threads in HowardForums. You can hack the phone itself to get around this.

HowardForums: Your Mobile Phone Community & Resource

Or check the Sprint phone section there and check for your model's specific hack. They won't allow you to pay for tethering but its the data hogs tied to a pc streaming video and downloading movies they want to kill not someone hooked up to a gps for traffic. You can't use much on that connection. They won't even notice.

 

[mvl]

All the carriers are banning tethering in the US.

The carrier costs of a high-tether customer is exorbitant, and truly unfairly slows down the network for us pittance users. They really should do something like T-mobile did (but stopped for some dumb reason): run 3G for a capped contractual number of GB, then allow unlimited 2g-only above the cap. That makes the youtubers pay their fair share, and lets minimal users pay minimal $$.

Tomtom support told me they're abandoning PLUS as well. When I had issues with my PLUS traffic, they said "we'll give you a free antenna, but we're no longer fixing PLUS accounts". They don't even discuss PLUS on their US website (although they still let you buy it in Home).

Tomtom's moving all it's cellular-data development to the LIVE built-in concept.

 

[canderson]

Except for, of all carriers - can you imagine - Verizon! They appear to be expanding their tethered service rather than add new restrictions to service as is usually the case. They're trying to move a step ahead of the competition with the DROID.

According to the Verizon, we should soon (or already?) see something they will call the Verizon Broadband Access Connect Plan arrive for the Android slider. Insiders suggest the usual $15 per month (on top of your regular data contract) and that should get you a 5GB per month limit (WAY more than any TomTom traffic unit would ever use), and the same as Verizon?s existing standalone EV-DO card and USB modem plans. Even if they can't get that sorted out, there is already a 3rd party tethering solution for the DROID units.

Meanwhile, Verizon continues to offer tethering for their existing (pre-DROID) "smart phones" that support their EV-DO network.