Is there any reason one most open an internet connection with another application first to use the PCS Vision connect profile with the Internet Sharing application? It is an annoying workaround. Can't we at least tweak a registry key or something?

Moreover, why does the phone appear to offer PAM service all the time, but in order to use it, I must click through the Internet Connect application interface? What is so terribly hard about the phone simply detecting a PAM request and connecting at that time?

I'm not sure what I'm missing here, but it seems that PAM should be simpler than DUN, yet I find myself doing more steps than I did back in the days of my t68i with DUN!

Here's the deal...

Our phones can connect to Power Vision with one of two different accounts. There's the normal PV account which is used for data services on the device itself. This is the one for which you select the username and password. When you open IE, Opera, Outlook, AIM, etc, it's connecting with that account. If you have PAM, a separate account is used. You can't change the account info, I believe it's hard coded into the phone. This is really the only way Sprint knows whether you're tethering or not, which account your Mogul uses to log into Power Vision. If you don't have an active connection and you try to connect with Internet Sharing, it will make the connection with the PAM account and if you don't have it on your plan, it won't connect. If you connect first with some other program and then connect with ICS, it just uses the active session, ie regular Power Vision, and Sprint doesn't know the difference.

The reason there's an inconvenience of having to connect before starting an ICS session is because we're getting around a measure Sprint set up to prevent us from tethering for free. If you want to pay $40 a month for PAM, you won't need to connect first, just select PAM from the ICS drop down and you're set. But I think the extra couple clicks are worth not spending that kind of money. What we're doing is cheating and it's barely making a sacrifice to get away with it. I'm sure there's probably a registry key to get around this, but no one has found it yet. Someone could probably whip up a Mortscript to do it too. But I'm lazy so I just use a little app called GPRS that initiates a data connection and that's it. So if I need to use ICS or an app that won't initiate a connection like Picsel, I run that first.

Yeah those 3 cilcks are to get free tethering is so terrible <sarcasm

In my opinion it is super easy to do, I mean come on you can't handle 3 clicks when you're going on the net and making a thousand clicks.

Also in your simple plug in idea, exactly how is your phone going to know if you are hooking up for activesync or internet??

Please see my post here:

http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showpost.p...5&postcount=35

i only skimmed this thread, but i havent done any reg tweaks or deactivated anything... i just use internet sharing and it works...

And no charges for 3 months now, using it tethered once a day or more...

Just did chill's reg tweak and got internet sharing to work. Didn't have it b4 w/o connecting first.

I pay $99/mo for the largest SERO plan. Sprint claims that PAM is not an option, as my phone service includes data. Don't complain at me for trying to get something I don't deserve!

I will try luv2chill's suggestion very soon and see what happens. I suspect it will let me cut out one step, but not autoconnect.

Primenall, Bluetooth PAN is a specific part of bluetooth. How does your phone tell whether an incoming bluetooth connection is a sync, sending a file, hooking up a bluetooth headset, etc? It is all part of the bluetooth spec. PAN is no different. The initialization time on the internet app on the handset is quite low, so I'm sure at worst, the first PAN packets could be delayed a second or two.

This reminds me of how my old Palm Treo made me switch Bluetooth DUN on and off manually. It was just a kludgy way for programmers to get around the work of writing more functional software. With later models, that option disappeared and nothing was lost!

Personally I find it offensive that I have a "Unlimited text and Data plan" but then they say I have to "upgrade" from a SERO plan to a regular plan so I can buy a "Data Plan" in order to tether. So that basically means that I dont have an unlimited data plan. Its LIMITED to on device use. PFFT>

Let me just summarize here for my own sake. It is safe and essentially risk free to use an app like PDAnet to tether your mogul even with a Sprint SERO plan? Are there any other precautions we should take? Do users get flagged for using an insanely high amount of data? I dont plan to tether much, but the mobility of a wireless laptop connection "anywhere" is very appealing.

I'm in the same boat as you: ICS for tethering just works for me. I haven't had to do anything to my registry or anything else to make it work.

My whole phone seems to be this way. I don't have the problems, such as bluetooth quality, battery life, memory leak, that everyone complains about. It's weird.