In a response to an Engadget inquiry on the subject, AT&T has said that it “cannot provide any details at this time” as to when, or if, U.S. iPhone users will receive the option to use the phone’s built-in tethering feature.
“We know that iPhone users love their devices and mobile broadband, and that they’re likely to embrace tethering just as they have other features and apps – by using it a lot,” the company said in its response. “iPhone tethering has the potential to exponentially increase traffic, and we need to ensure that we’re able to deliver excellent performance for the feature – over and above the increases in data traffic we’re already seeing – before we will offer the feature.” AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said in November 2008 that tethering support would be coming “soon;” built-in support for the feature was added to the iPhone OS in June 2009, but AT&T said in October that more “fine tuning” would be required before it launched the feature.
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