I was using my BB pearl flip to tether to my home computer, but a few weeks ago cellular south did something to stop this. Does anyone know what they did and what I can do to go back to tethering? When I try dialing it says the user name or password is invalid. Any Ideas???? I have tether berry but it blocks some sites and it is not as fast as the straight tether to cellular south. HELP!

Wirelessly posted (8820)

Seriously, find out if the service provider really did something to block access or just changed something. If they've blocked it, trying to break the block isn't a good idea.

That is what I am trying to do now. To find out what happened, I had several of my friends hooked up as well and they all lost the tethering ability. Does anyone here have a tether set up on cellular south with a bb, and not with tetherberry? If so let me please let me know.

Wirelessly posted (8820)

How about calling blackberry customer service at cellular south and asking if they've changed their policy and how?

I know what there policy was, it was no tether support. I didn't use their support but found out on blackberry forums how to tether and it worked for some time, but as I stated earlier they did something a few few weeks ago and now when I use the dial up connection I had configered it says bad user name or password. I was wondering if other folks are having this same problem on cellular south and if they have overcome it??

Carriers do this kind of thing periodically. There is a loophole out there, too many people exploit it, and the carrier notices. Then they change settings for the feature and the game is over. T-Mobile does this with their T-Zones data plan ($5.99) where they'll let folks enter a proxy to get full data services on the cut-rate/cut-feature plan instead of making them buy the full service (and way more expensive) plan. After a while they notice too many customers getting over on them so they change the proxy. Everybody's cheap/free data goes bye-bye overnight.

They don't publish any notice of the change because it's not a legit use of their services. Support won't be any help because nobody was supposed to be doing it in the first place. Check out the carrier's support forums and see if everyone is whining about it. That's the only way to know for sure, unless you have a friend inside who can clue you in.

Wirelessly posted (8820)

So, rambo, they don't out and out block it, just change the access, and when the new access info leaks and spreads and useage hits some level, they change it again? That's strange, to me anyway.

Nothing strange about it at all. From the carrier viewpoint, they are just eliminating your free access to a service they are not supporting (a.k.a. loophole). You should be grateful that they are just not adding fees in addition.

If you check around, there are MANY forums that exist solely to find these loopholes. A word of caution. If the carriers find out that you are doing this repeatedly, your BIS (or any other service) will be terminated with no notice or reason given.

Wirelessly posted (8820)

I don't need to be grateful for anything in this regard. I'm happy to pay for service I use. I'm just asking in order to understand. My thought is the carrier would block access to non-paying users or force users to pay to use it if their policy was to charge an additional fee for tethering. That's why I posted what I posted early on in the thread. Rambo set me straight. It still strikes me as strange business behavior. But I understand the op better now after rambo's post.

Thanks for all the info, but I am still not sure why cellular south changes the access if they don't offer a pay for tethering in the first place unless it uses up bandwidth and slow down some of their other paid for services.

How about listing some of these forums so I can go check them out and see if or when a leak occurs.

Wirelessly posted (8820)

Me neither, and I assume it is for technical reasons beyond my understanding. I take the others at their word.

I take them at their word too but I would still like to have a list of the forums that deal in this sort of thing. If anyone knows of some of these forums' list them here so I can check them out.