It's called "MediaNet Unlimited" and it's $15/mo per phone.

Wow. I just looked at the MediaNet plan for GoPhone. $4.99 per month gets you 1 MB, with each KB costing $.01 thereafter.

As much as I stream last.fm with Vagalume, I'd need to win every lottery in the US

The thing that's confusing with AT&T is that their DATA PLANS are only for the "smart phones", like Blackberries, Treos, whatever. Consumer cell phone uses MediaNET which is supposed to be the drivel AT&T provides such as their sites for buying ringtones, backgrounds, games. It got a bit better with an HSPA phone, because I can watch selected TV shows, and do some browsing. I tried installing Opera-Mini on my Shine, but you have to zoom in to see anything.

The way I read the ToS, tethering a computer to a smart phone is what AT&T doesn't like. Since consumer phones are "locked down" by AT&T (you can't delete the dumb demo games they put on there, for example), the fact that tethering via bluetooth works indicates (to me) that it's not THAT important to them.

As always, you sense of what's right should be your guide.

From what I read, the SERO plan is gone. It's now called "Everything Plus" Referral Program, and is $59.99 per month.

Yeah, they figured out people were abusing their "30 days of MediaNet Unlimited for $20" GoPhone option. (putting that SIM in their unlocked data card, and using it as an unlimited 3G data plan).

So now their GoPhone options are a lot more limited. Though, you can still get the a data only plan for a phone for $35/mo. I'm thinking about getting that for my Nokia E61i (work has a discount that cuts it down to $31/mo).

Yes, the Boingo plan is definitely tempting. I checked it out a couple of times with my N800 (they gave me a free month for some reason; I forget the details) and it worked well. If you have an obscure chain store near you called McDonald's, it probably has Boingo. But it doesn't work from anywhere, so you might as well get a hamburger or a coke while you're using it.

What I can't figure out, is how it could make any difference to the providers to offer even unlimited email and even msn/yahoo/etc chat via the phone's onboard programs, and using a tethered unit.

I gather it's going through their proxies, but even a decent amount of bandwidth shouldn't cost 5 to 10x as much!

I'd gladly pay the $5 if I could get even a relatively small amount of email or data. Bell Canada wanted $20 on top of a $30 minimum plan for 2MB (the minimum data plan) a couple of years ago when I was panting over a Treo 600P - free with contract... but I couldn't justify $50 for 2MB a MONTH. If each message was 7K, that's less than 10 messages per day.

Hmm... that SERO link posted above has an interesting point: http://wiki.howardforums.com/index.p...e_to_tether.3F

There's a link there about some phones that can do some surfing undercover, including Palms... looks like the Windows versions though:
http://www.junefabrics.com/pdanet/

And then YoDude's attempts here - http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=14059

When I talked to Telus about TURNING OFF all Internet access on my son's phone (after a $200 bill from game downloads, subscripts, etc - and I'm not working!) the tech told us "sure, we can turn off all net access.... well, unless he knows how to get around it"

I have to figure out what that means!

Boingo has a roaming agreement with AT&T. I use my Boingo plan and N810 at Starbucks in Fresno CA. I'm reasonably sure that means all Starbucks in the US.

I'm so going to get myself one of those MiFi units when they ship, and I'm gonna see if I can't find a provider who has one, because those will work perfectly for me traveling or moving about with my NIT. Till then, forget it. heh.

You mean like the cradlepoint routers that have been out for years? :-)

or do you only want one of the newer ones that have the cell radio built in?

Does Boingo have support for non-embedded devices?

Like netbooks, UMPCs, and laptops?

Wonder if they're going to support Android at some point.

The Boingo I'm using on the N810 is called their mobile edition. It supports a long list of smartphones that have WiFi and fortunately the Tablet. It takes a special bit of software downloadable from Boingo to run in your mobile device. I believe it's primary purpose is to make sure no one uses the mobile package with a laptop. One would think that at some time the Android will get it's own Boingo connection software. Here's their URL http://mobile.boingo.com/. There's a more pricey package for laptops and I'd think netbooks. I don't know if there's special software for the laptop class of machine to go along with the higher charges.