BlackBerry Bridge, the software needed to get email on a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, was bound to be controversial. By tying the PlayBook to a BlackBerry smartphone, it not only pipes over email and messages, it lets the PlayBook get on the Internet for free. That function, known as "tethering," is something for which carriers like to charge extra.
When users saw that AT&T doesn't allow its BlackBerry owners to download Bridge, the Internet went wild: was AT&T banning Bridge because of the tethering? Fortunately, it looks like the answer is no.
"AT&T is working with RIM to make the BlackBerry Bridge app available for AT&T customers. We have just received the app for testing and before it's made available to AT&T customers we want to ensure it delivers a quality experience," AT&T spokesman Seth Bloom said in an email.
So RIM's sin isn't free tethering, but rather the rushed way the PlayBook has come to market. When we got our review PlayBook, it lacked Bridge entirely, and RIM seems to be frantically updating and patching the tablet's software.
This illustrates a problem everyone but Apple seems to have, which I explained in a column last week: other than Apple, every other mobile device's manufacturers' updates often get held up by carriers' slower approval processes. It's interesting to see how in this case, the problem even applies to a Wi-Fi only product that, at first glance, doesn't have much to do with carriers. By requiring Bridge, of course, RIM dragged the carriers back into the mix.