What's With The Tiptoeing Around Tethering?

Earlier this week, Palm asked developers on its Pre Dev Wiki developer forum to refrain from discussing tethering for fear of upsetting Sprint, Palm's exclusive carrier for the Pre. Sprint doesn't currently support tethering, although the Pre supports it and Palm permits it in its terms of service.

"We have been politely cautioned by Palm that any discussion of tethering during the Sprint exclusivity period (and perhaps beyond -- we don't know yet) will probably cause Sprint to complain to Palm, and if that happened then Palm would be forced to react against the people running the IRC channel and this wiki," Palm said in a post to the Pre Dev Wiki.

AT&T, exclusive carrier for the iPhone, isn't one of the 22 carriers in 42 countries that have agreed to support tethering for the iPhone 3G S, which will launch on Friday. Apple executives danced around the fact that AT&T won't immediately support tethering for U.S. iPhone users, but the news didn't go over well with attendees of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference earlier this month.

After an ensuing flood of negative publicity, AT&T said it does plan to offer tethering capability for the iPhone but offered no timetable for when it might be available. AT&T does offer tethering for other devices, including the Blackberry.

Carriers are no big fans of wireless tethering because of the prospect that it could cannibalize sales of more lucrative wireless broadband services. But according to Forrester Analyst Ian Fogg, carriers have also avoided marketing tethering services because they're worried about increased customer support costs stemming from a subpar setup experience.

Meanwhile, as global carriers continue to add support for tethering, the pressure for U.S. carriers to do the same will continue to grow, although Sprint and AT&T will probably be impervious to this pressure given the exclusive nature of their relationships with Palm and Apple.

However, carrier exclusivity is beginning to attract the attention of lawmakers. This week a group of U.S. senators urged the Federal Communications Commission to look into exclusivity deals between mobile device makers and carriers.