mobileu.co.uk

No from the top on iPhone to iPad tether

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has confirmed that the iPad tablet, set to launch in the US on 3rd April, will not have the facility to tether to the iPhone to use its data connection.

This news has come in a somewhat roundabout way: Slashat.se, a Swedish tech blog and podcast reported that a Swedish trance DJ called J. Jezper Söderlund emailed Steve Jobs directly asking if a Wi-Fi-only iPad would be able to tether to the internet using an iPhone's 3G connection. The DJ received the following short and maybe not-so-sweet reply from the top man at Apple:

"No."

There seems to be little doubt that this email did come from Apple's CEO and the report has since appeared on other sites such as AppleInsider, which is a blog dedicated to news relating to Apple.

The apparent decision from Apple not to allow iPhone to iPad tethering does not preclude carriers from offering this, of course. Support for tethering on the iPhone 3.0 was added when this version was released in the UK in June 2009 and various UK carriers now offer iPhone tethering plans.

US customers have not been so lucky however. AT&T, the exclusive iPhone carrier in the USA, has been promising to offer tethering there for some time but US customers are still waiting.