iPhone tethering to come soon?

With the showing up of Netshare on the App Store a short time after its launch, excitement brewedover the fact of using the iPhone 3G as a modem but these dreams wereshattered when the application was taken off by Apple.

Now at the Web 2.0 summit, AT&T's CEO confirmed that the iPhone 3G could be utilized as a modem in the near future. The iPhone 3G was speculated to have affected AT&T's 3G network because of the sudden increase in users browsing the internet which resulted in slower speeds for browsing and poor stability for voice calls on the phone itself. Thus, the recent announcement on the issue of tethering was made after the 3G network was improved and made capable of handling such a burden; so as the rumor goes.

AT&T is notorious to charge a higher access fee for tethering and with the jailbreak option on the iPhone 3G, one is able to keep their current data plan and install free programs such as PDANet through Cydia which in return allows the user to use the device as a modem.

Could it be that the new 2.2 firmware will carry the tethering option? Only time will tell.

The recurring monthly charge for the feature and release date were not announced.

source: MobileCrunch via MacRumors