Legal Commentary

Use the iPhone as a broadband wireless card

By Ernest Svenson

A company called Nullriver created a $10 application that allows you to use your iPhone as a broadband wireless card for your laptop. Here's the deal: Many people have broadband wireless cards so that they can use their laptops anywhere (more or less) that there is cellphone coverage. Sprint, Verizon and AT&T all offer these broadband cards, which you plug into a slot on the side of your laptop (either the PCMCIA or USB slot).

Problem is: the data plan for these things usually costs about $60 per month. That's why people are were excited about the prospect of using the Apple iPhone to 'tether' to a laptop and surf the web at high rates of speed. And they're also fearful that Apple and/or AT&T is going to put the kibosh on this (see update below).

I downloaded the Nullriver application and tested it. Totally amazing! And definitely gives you high speed access to your laptop. In my case I got about 650 kbps downstream and almost 200 kbps upstream. This is comparable to the 3G broadband card I have with AT&T. I'd love to cancel my broadband service and just use the iPhone, but that ain't happening.

Here's why.

First, the set up is really tricky. I ran into some problems following the directions that came with the application, but then I've never configured two devices to run a SOCKS5 proxy. How about you?

Once I set it up correctly it worked amazingly well, and I was momentarily (and delusionally) contemplating how I could ditch my AT&T broadband service. But then reality set in. The little configuration obstacle course is something I'd have to do every time I wanted to pair up my laptop and my iPhone. And then there is the issue of battery life. Using the iPhone as a constant connection will suck the battery life out of it faster than a pack of dogs on a 3 legged cat. And that would be a problem since I rely on the iPhone to make and receive phone calls. (I know, I'm a maverick).

Still, it's nice to know that, in a pinch, I could use my iPhone to surf the Internet at high rates of speed. But, then come to think of it, it does that already doesn't it?

Update: looks like Apple has once again removed the application from the iTunes store. So long little App, we hardly knew ye.

Full post as published by Ernie the Attorney on August 02, 2008 (boomark / email).