AT&T Network Not Ready for Tethering?

Remember the good old days when one could hack an iPhone and start tethering on it. AT&T and Apple have not been a fan of tethering on iPhone, but the company did promise its customers that it will introduce the feature in the near future. It all comes down to how you define the word “near.” To give AT&T credit, the company did keep its word on MMS. It took longer than we all expected for the feature to be introduced, but AT&T finally did it. As far as tethering goes, it seems we will have to wait a bit more:

Whenever we [AT&T] offer new features, we want to offer the best possible customer experience. For tethering, we need to do some additional fine tuning to our systems and networks so that we do deliver a great experience

So the network is still not ready to handle the extra load that tethering would put on it. Considering the fact that AT&T affords to provide global wireless access to Amazon Kindle 2I owners, it’s surprising that the company doesn’t put more focus on offering the feature its customers have asked for. AT&T has made some concessions by allowing VOIP apps such as Skype to function without a hitch on iPhone. It may also be planning to clamp down on people who are putting extra load on the network. So on the one hand, we have AT&T telling us that it’s working to introduce tethering on iPhone. On the other hand, the network struggles to keep up with the load. Let’s not forget about those dropped calls on AT&T network either. Many experts still believe that the feature may be introduced by this year’s end, but it’s tough to figure out how that’s possible considering all the issues that AT&T has to deal with.

Your take: is AT&T sacrificing quantity for quality (when it comes to iPhone)?