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.
