Marc Hedlund, the guy at ORA who basically first made a bunch of noise about Sprint’s boneheaded decision to cripple the Dial Up Networking portion of the Treo 650’s Bluetooth stack, just got an update from one of Sprint’s PR executives telling him that a post-launch patch will re-enable the phone’s DUN capability. Sprint maintains that adding DUN support back in was their plan all along, and that forcing users to subscribe to a separate data plans for laptops (instead of using the Treo via Bluetooth to connect to Sprint’s Vision data network) isn’t part of their plan for the devices.
Sprint’s rep goes on to say they have no restrictions on the devices from a “pricing/plan standpoint,” but I think it’s important to point out that Sprint also stopped selling USB cables to connect to phones right after they launched Vision, presumably to prevent people from taking advantage of the all-you-can-eat pricing.
So I don’t buy it, I’m saying, but that doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the customer base complained about a decision Sprint made and Sprint responded. I think that is a fine model for future behavior for everyone involved.
UPDATE: Sprint Says Treo 650 WILL Support Bluetooth Dialup [OreillyNet]
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Treo Archives [Gizmodo]
