BlackBerry® PlayBook™

[lcocea]

It's weird... Internet tethering used to work fine under 1.0 and today I tested it under 2.0 for the first time after the upgrade... and it doesn't work anymore. Both my PlayBook and my phone reported that the Internet connection was successfull, and the time counter in the PB Bluetooth icon is happily ticking away, yet all apps that I launched (Browser, Weather, Messages) complained that no network connection is available. I checked my provider's online help to see whether they changed the Terms and Conditions; nope, all seems to be as before (i.e., they still allow tethering). What gives? Tx.

[spraygun]

Spent a lot of time on this issue with RIM. There is no known solution. It's lost. Until I saw your post, I thought it was just my Playbook. I liked that feature and was sad to loose it with 2.0.

[lcocea]

Thanks. This is sad. Looks like they're either killing features or just can't be bothered to fix the bugs in Tablet OS 2.0 because they're busy developing BB10 and there are too few of us using this feature. I really liked internet tethering.

[mgarf33]

It would seem the "indistinguishable" or "emulated" signal in relation to the BB phone is no longer.  A feature once touted to sell the PB, has been revoked.

Your service provider has probably cut you off. Your BBS Internet plan is not much good anymore, in this regard.  You will now need to pay additional fees. At least this seems to be the case in my situation. 

The problem is, if you're using a BB smartphone, it's very difficult to get the Internet via bluetooth with any other brand tablet or laptop device, even if you pay the tethering charges, you'll still have to use the usb cable. Unless, of course, you have a wifi hotspot phone.

[aandras]

If you are using a bb phone try tether bridge.

[lcocea]

I don't have a BB phone because I need a dual SIM phone and there are no BBs that support 2 SIM cards (AFAIK).

[lcocea · Accepted solution]

As it turns out Internet tethering works just fine and the Fido/Rogers rep that I spoke to on the phone a few months ago either was ignorant or lied to me when he said they don't block this feature. I am now in the EU and I am posting this message from my PlayBook, which is Internet-tethered to my LG dumbphone using a SIM card (GSM/EDGE) from a local provider. Cheers, RIM!

[knottyrope]

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lcocea wrote:

As it turns out Internet tethering works just fine and the Fido/Rogers rep that I spoke to on the phone a few months ago either was ignorant or lied to me when he said they don't block this feature. I am now in the EU and I am posting this message from my PlayBook, which is Internet-tethered to my LG dumbphone using a SIM card (GSM/EDGE) from a local provider. Cheers, RIM!

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thats good news. Which model did you get? it might help some others

[rat-7]

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lcocea wrote:

As it turns out Internet tethering works just fine and the Fido/Rogers rep that I spoke to on the phone a few months ago either was ignorant or lied to me when he said they don't block this feature. I am now in the EU and I am posting this message from my PlayBook, which is Internet-tethered to my LG dumbphone using a SIM card (GSM/EDGE) from a local provider. Cheers, RIM!

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It depend on your data plan, Rogers enable bridge and tethering with data plan of 1gb or more per month

[lcocea]

@knottyrope -- I have the standard Wi-Fi, 16 GB model.

@rat-7 -- The point is, when I first got my PB, Internet tethering worked when I occasionally purchased a 10MB data "pack" from Fido to check my email. Then it stopped working (this coincided with the PB OS 2.0 upgrade) and I called Fido and they said no, we don't block tethering on data packs, it should work, check with RIM. But I guess Rogers, the mother company, wants us all to pay the monthly $50 tax. In the EU you get 2GB on pre-pay for 8€ (~$12). It's 3G and interestingly, in the cities here 3G is almost as fast as my home Bell ADSL in Ottawa (6/0.6 instead of 7/0.8 mbps).