Tethering Part of AT&T's Vision for Apple's iPhone

Before you wake up in the morning, your iPhone downloads your news and tells your coffeemaker to start brewing. Then when you're up and you wave the device at your TV, the news feeds get transferred to your TV. That's how AT&T's iPhone chief Ralph de la Vega envisions the popular Apple device in the future, according to a public discussion Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Lock Your Door, Start Your Car After you drink your coffee and read your news on the TV, de la Vega envisions you'll use your iPhone to lock your house door, start your car, and, as you drive, the device's text-to-speech function reads you the news you haven't yet read. At the office, the ubiquitous device coordinates a conference call and, since the call is with non-English speakers, it translates your English into their spoken language and vice versa, acting as the voice for both sides. De la Vega also said AT&T Labs is working to integrate the iPhone with its Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service, U-Verse. One function would be to use the smartphone as a remote control for the programming service and for its digital video recorder, with the resulting TV programming playing either on the TV or on the iPhone. Al Hilwa, a program director at industry research firm IDC, noted that such all-in-one automated uses have also been projected in past years for computers. "But most people find this kind of extreme automation to be more trouble than it's worth," he said. He noted that a PC is much more capable than an iPhone, and "we don't use a PC to start a car." The key to what the future iPhone will do, he said, is solving problems where mobility has been a problem or is an asset. "The litmus test is mobility," he said. "Is there a solution to some problem for which carrying it with you is an asset?" Tethering, Hot Spots, Femtocells Closer to the present, an AT&T spokesperson has confirmed that the company is working with Apple to develop a tether for the device, which would allow a user to connect the phone to a computer and thus obtain access to AT&T's 3G network. A third-party application to allow this kind of functionality has appeared in Apple's App Store, but it has only been sporadically available. According to some news reports, tethering could be available next year. AT&T also announced Thursday the addition of about 20,000 new wireless Wi-Fi hot spots in the U.S., which would be available at no charge to iPhone users. The additional hot spots are the result of the company's acquisition of Wayport, a Wi-Fi provider that has hot spots at hotels run by Four Seasons, Hilton, Holiday Inn, Marriott, Sheraton and Wyndham, as well as all McDonald's restaurants. The discussion with de la Vega did drop some other hints that have AT&T- and iPhone-watchers buzzing. For instance, when asked when AT&T might bring out a phone based on the open-source Android platform, de la Vega didn't answer, but the interviewer, Michael Arrington, mentioned that backstage de la Vegas has said Dec. 3. As for problems with coverage, especially in urban areas, de la Vega mentioned that one solution involves femtocell technology. Users would need to buy small stations that, when plugged into an office or home broadband connection, would create small-area cell coverage in that location.