Tethering, or connecting to the internet through a cell phone’s data plan, is possible on many modern phones. One of which is my phone, the Sprint Palm Treo 700wx, running Windows Mobile 2003.

Since I have the Sprint Employee Referral Program for my phone, I have included in my plan free unlimited data, or Power Vision as they call it. So while I am not very mobile, I thought I’d give tethering on my laptop through my phone a try.

I downloaded and installed PDANet on my Windows XP system, and connected my phone via its data cable to the laptop. After installing, on the phone I went to the PDANet tray and clicked connect. Afterwards, the Windows system had a popup indicating it had connected.

From my couch, I get 2 bars of signal strength (out of 4), and various bandwidth tests I did rated me at ~220Kbps. Not great, but definitely usable. I really wish I researched this before the New York trip, man was it a pain to get a constant connection going.