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It looks like AT&T are going to charge iPhone users to tether their iPhone to their PC or Mac, and it will cost around $30 per month and there will be a cap on the data of 5GB per month.

The reason we haven’t heard or seen anything about it, is because AT&T is being extremely paranoid of how the service will run on their network. “Since I’ve worked here, I’ve never seen them be so worried about legalities,” my colleague explained. Regarding the service being available to Blackberry users, he says that it’s a different situation. Blackberry users haven’t slammed AT&T’s network by the millions in one quarter, in such large rushes. “Regardless of how many billions of dollars AT&T pours into their 3G network, it hasn’t been stable enough to handle all you iPhone users,” he explained.

Here’s some details of the potential tethering plan.

• 5GB Data Cap (just like Blackberry users) – AT&T will automatically turn off your tethering connection if you use too much bandwidth. Of note, the 5GB cap might get sliced for all users, not just iPhone users, in order to accommodate all new tethering plan customers (bandwidth demand).
• Initial connection through iTunes? (not sure if this is every time you connect, or just for initial setup)
• Expected speeds: GPRS: 30k – dialup speeds / EDGE: 110k – ISDN speeds / 3G: 1000k – slow broadband.
• You’ll want to disable auto-updates for everything, so as to not go over usage limitations.
• Will be +$30/month, new iPhone plans may be rolled out with tethering rolled in.
• Do not pro-rate tethering/bandwidth, it can become a nightmare, instead wait until new billing cycle.
• For unlimited bandwidth, AT&T will tell you to get a wireless PC card.
• No idea on a launch date.

So basically: AT&T wants to charge you $30 per month for a plan that can only be used for occasional tethering. It’s what we expected, sure, but it’s not what we’d hoped.

As you might expect, it will be capped at 5gigs a month, which seems pretty anemic for $30 bucks to us. On the bright side, PdaNet is available for FREE on Cydia and does for free just what AT&T wants to charge you +$30/month.