Apple Pulled iTether From The App Store To Keep Carriers Happy

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Screen Shot 2011-11-29 at 4.16.04 PM

We told you about iTether last night, a new app in the App Store that let anyone have unlimited tethering from their iPhone’s 3G connection for a one-time purchase of $15.

We were all amazed that iTether made it past Apple’s stringent App Store review process, and no one expected the app to remain available for very long. Apple has since pulled iTether from the App Store, and the developers behind the app have explained why.

iTether is developed by the folks at Tether.com, a well known company with similar apps for both Blackberry and Android. Tether has been featured in publications like The New York TimesEntrepreneur, and TechCrunch.

In an official statement provided by Tether this morning, the company explains why Apple pulled their app:

Around 12PM EST, Apple called our head office to let us know they were going to go ahead and pull our app iTether from the App Store. They stated it was because the app itself burdens the carrier network, however they offered us no way to remedy the solution… We were very clear when listing the app what the primary function was and they even followed up with several questions and requested a video demo then they approved the application.

We strongly disagree that it burdens a carrier’s network, as from our own data history on more than 500,000 users we know the average user consumes less than 200 MBs of data per month on Tether. In comparison, one TV show streamed from Netflix, an approved Apple App, could easily be in the 300-400 MBs range. Sure, there are some users that will consume way more than the average however that’s the case with any of these types of products.

Our team is very disappointed in Apple’s decision; as we strongly believe we help carriers better monetize their data stream by pushing customers into new data tiers further increasing their bottom-line. It is very anti-competitive to not allow any Tethering application to enter into this space to innovate. Our team has created a lot of innovative solutions for the BlackBerry product, which we were hoping to port over to the iPhone like end-to-end encryption, compression, website filtering and port filtering.

According to Apple, users who purchase iTether before it was pulled will continue to be able to use the product.

Our team is evaluating all of our options… Stay tuned.

There is currently an app in the Cydia store for jailbreakers called “iTether,” but the app is made by a different developer.

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