Use your smartphone as a Wi-Fi hotspot: Tethering

The connection uncertainty among digital service provider over the years has strongly encouraged multiple phones for individual to minimize missing important calls experience. It is common today to see an individual with multiple smartphone with different service provider, the BIG question now is: Should this individual also pay for multiple internet services?  

It is of commonly knowledge that the entire mobile services provider now provide daily or weekly or monthly data plan to their subscribers depending on the choice of service by the subscriber. It will interest you to note that advancement in technology has unveiled us with the  possibility of sharing data plan of a smartphone among other smartphone, tablet or laptop via tethering by using one of the smartphone as wi-fi hotspot as outline below.

Guide to tethering in smartphone

What is Tethering?

Tethering is the use of smartphone to offer internet access to other Internet-enabled mobile device such as PDAs, Laptop, IPhones etc. In a simple term, Tethering is the process of sharing a smartphone internet access among others.   The connection is made either with a cable (USB or serial) or wirelessly through bluetooth or Wi-Fi or the good old days IrDA (infrared). Tethering enables users to go online from their laptops or PDAs in situations where there is no other means of Internet access: If you are already paying for data service on any of your smartphone and your service provider does not require any extra fees for using your cell phone as a modem for your laptop, tethering can also save you money, since you will not have to pay for separate mobile broadband service or buy additional hardware just to get your laptop connected to the internet. With tethering, you can share the data plan of your smartphone with other devices such as a tablet or laptop.

A smartphone's small screen is not in most cases convenient to be used for browsing as compare to that of tablet when it comes to web or streaming videos from the net. But tethering offers you the opportunity to use your smartphone as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot, and share its data connection with your Wi-Fi-only tablet. This setup is called tethering or internet sharing, and many smartphones provide this feature, including iPhones, BlackBerrys, Windows Phones and, of course, Android handsets.

General guide to tethering

To every smartphone (Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phones) tethering means the same thing in all mobile operating system, but is the method of setting them up that differs. As pointed earlier, Tethering is when you turn your smartphone into a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot and share your phones 3G/4G data connection. Once you have turned tethering on, any device with a wireless connection can connect to the internet via your smartphone's connection and this is where security issue will be of importance.

It is important to note that is not all smartphones that support tethering, but most popular models do, including the iPhone, Samsung Galaxy S3, Nokia Lumia 920 and BlackBerry Z10. Tethering is not limited to the use of Wi-Fi to share your smartphone's internet connection: some now allow you to connect a laptop or tablet possibly through a universal serial bus (USB) cable. Alternatively, you might be able to use Bluetooth.

Regardless of the connection method, it's important to check whether your mobile tariff allows tethering before using your smartphone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. In some cases, the mobile operator can prevent the option from appearing on your handset if tethering is not part of the deal. iPhone owners can attest to this because Personal Hotspot does not show up in the General settings menu in most iphones.

Available alternative to tethering if one is denied by phone manufacturer.

First, and most obviously, you could switch to a different operator or tariff (or request a bolt-on to your current tariff) that allows you to use your smartphone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. That might mean paying more each month, but it's likely to work out cheaper than the alternatives.

If you haven't already bought a tablet, you might consider buying one with 3G or 4G support. You'd then have to get a data-only SIM card for it, and either pay monthly or pay as you go for this separate tariff.

How do I setup tethering on my device?

The process is straight forward that involves enabling the hotspot option on your phone and most importantly, configuring wireless security with a password to prevent other people wireless device into your connection, then connecting your tablet to the wireless network just as you would with any hotspot. If you have configured your device properly, tethering just work.

In some cases, You will have to enter the password once to connect, but on subsequent occasions, your tablet connect automatically.

Some major challenges of tethering

Some of the major problems in tethering (i.e using your phone as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot) are that your tablet will assume it is connected to a fixed data plan or broadband line and ignore all mobile data plan limitations thereby using the bandwidth extravagantly. The implication of this is that, it will use up your limited monthly data allowance very quickly. What your smartphone would have ignored during browsing normally on mobile data plan (downloading application updates and any other large data files) your tablet would assume its ok with tethering and download everything downloadable during access thereby consuming bandwidth in great amount. Hence, you are strongly advice in your own interest to either disable automatic updates or download. Better still, maintain a close attention on download behaviors and how much data is being used by looking in your phone's settings or through a dedicated application you may have installed earlier.

It will be wise decision to disable the hotspot running on your smartphone when you are no longer using to prolong your battery life.