
Apple pulls iTether, our official statement - username3
https://tether.com/apple-pulls-itether
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username3
_Apple Pulls iTether

Submitted by phankinson on Tue, 11/29/2011 - 14:22

Around 12PM EST, Apple called our head office to let us know they were going
to go ahead and pull our app iTether from the App Store. They stated it was
because the app itself burdens the carrier network, however they offered us no
way to remedy the solution… We were very clear when listing the app what the
primary function was and they even followed up with several questions and
requested a video demo then they approved the application.

We strongly disagree that it burdens a carrier’s network, as from our own data
history on more than 500,000 users we know the average user consumes less than
200 MBs of data per month on Tether. In comparison, one TV show streamed from
Netflix, an approved Apple App, could easily be in the 300-400 MBs range.
Sure, there are some users that will consume way more than the average however
that’s the case with any of these types of products.

Our team is very disappointed in Apple’s decision; as we strongly believe we
help carriers better monetize their data stream by pushing customers into new
data tiers further increasing their bottom-line. It is very anti-competitive
to not allow any Tethering application to enter into this space to innovate.
Our team has created a lot of innovative solutions for the BlackBerry product,
which we were hoping to port over to the iPhone like end-to-end encryption,
compression, website filtering and port filtering.

According to Apple, users who purchase iTether before it was pulled will
continue to be able to use the product.

Our team is evaluating all of our options… Stay tuned._

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chromejs10
I agree with their comments. I don't know if it's really anti-competitive or
not since there are only so many ways you can create a tethering app. However,
I am a firm believer that if I'm paying for 2GB of data, I should be able to
use up to 2GB data however I want. Charge me extra if I go over that (carriers
would probably make a lot of money that way), but until I do go over, why
can't I tether? If anything it should be a built in option that doesn't cost
me anything extra IMO.

