It was first revealed back in April that Verizon had started to block apps in the Android Market that they had deemed unacceptable or to be in violation of their contract terms. The most immediate to face the block were a range of tethering applications, which were obviously chewing up precious bandwidth on the big red’s network. It now appears that Verizon have taken their app blocking to a whole new level, implementing a new strategy of blocking updates to previously approved paid apps.
EasyTether Block
This has not been confirmed by Verizon and so should be treated as a rumor at this stage, but the image below has come via a Reddit user who went to the Android Market to update EasyTether and was greeted by a message from Verizon telling him the app has now been blocked. The problem faced here is that he originally paid $9.99 for the app, when it was not blocked by his provider. The workaround is fairly simple, you just switch to Wi-Fi only mode and then head to the Android Market and update your app. The not so simple part is that Verizon have now implemented a method of tying any wireless tether app you download from the market into the built-in wireless tether app in the Android OS, which you need to have enabled on their end for it to work.
The below video presents a workaround for this, but we do not recommend doing this as there is no way of knowing what Verizon will do once they figure out why all this extra data is still being consumed by tethered users!
If you do decide to proceed, as always let us know how you go.
Related posts:
- Google Blocking Tethering Apps On Android Market For AT&T, Verizon And T-Mobile Customers
- Verizon Plans To Introduce Verizon Apps Store For Android Smartphones
- Verizon Follows AT&T On Blocking JailBreak-Based Hotspot
- Sony Xperia Play Coming To Verizon May 26th For $200 On-Contract
- Verizon Begins Rolling Out Android 2.3 Gingerbread Update For Droid 2 Global
Article by Reg Crampton
Reg has written 141 articles .
If you like This post, you can follow Gizmo Digit on Twitter.
Subscribe to Gizmo Digit feed via RSS or EMAIL to receive instant updates.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
What “extra” bandwidth? I signed up for *unlimited* bandwidth after Verizon salesman promised that I can use Easytether. In fact, I had not known such an app existed until *Verizon recommended* that. Otherwise I wouldn’t be a Verizon customer at the first place.