We at scaredpoet.com know that quite a few of our readers are Sprint PCS users. Many of them use a product known as PCS Vision for mobile data service. And while the service is intended for trivial little things like downloading ringtones and sending short messages with low-res photos attached, there are ways to hook up your Sprint PCS phone to certain devices, like laptops, and with the proper installed drivers turn said wireless phone into a fully functional portable modem that gives you data speeds equivalent to and sometimes faster than dialup. While it’s not as fast as WiFi, the service is much more widespread and works well in places where a WiFi hotspot isn’t available… or the hotspot isn’t free and you’re unable or unwilling to shell out the dough to connect with it.

Of course, we must remind people that such a practice officially violates the Terms and Conditions of said data plans. The reason being that while the data plans are “unlimited,” the assumption is that surfing from the strict and tiny confines of your cell phone’s 1.5 inch screen would never generate gobs of traffic, while a bandwidth-hungry power user on a laptop most certainly would.

In spite of the official frowning on “tethered” connections, as they’re known, users do report that they continue this practice. When the SonyEricsson T608 was introduced sporting Bluetooth capability, tetherers snapped up the extremely limited supply of phones quickly because it made the practice even easier. Sadly, lore has it that only 10,000 of these phones were ever made before SonyEricsson decided to leave the US CDMA market. Of that number, many of the units, which never underwent full testing and development, ended up dead on arrival. And of the handsets still in existence, everyone agrees the phone is very slow to respond to commands and keystrokes and operates with bug-riddled firmware.

Even so, the T608 made tethering phenominally easy. So it was no surprise that when the next Bluetooth phone arrived on scene, the ability to tether over bluetooth was disabled. There was outrage when word of this hobbling first came out, especially because this new phone is not cheap, and people generally don’t take it well when an expensive piece of hardware is hobbled in some way.

The outrage caused Sprint to backtrack significantly. Yes, they said, bluetooth tethering would be disabled on this phone when it first goes on sale, but a future patch would re-enable it, once they’re sure they can figure out a way to uhm.. prevent abuse.

Well, two days after the launch, someone found a way to re-enable tethering… without having to wait for Sprint to get around to it.

Now, we must repeat, at scaredpoet.com, we do not condone abusing PCS Vision service by tethering. Therefore, owners of the Treo 650 should not download this patched file and install it on an SD card. Nor should they use this utility to then copy that patched file to the Treo’s RAM, thus enabling the Dial-Up-Networking profile on the Treo.

We at scaredpoet.com do not encourage such unethical behavior. No sir. That would be, well, unethical.

Also, please note: If you decide to be, erm, unethical, be aware that Sprint could contact you and force your account off the “unlimited” data plan and onto a $0.01/kb plan instead. While 1 cent pet kilobyte sounds cheap, those pennies add up when you consider that if you download a 50MB file under this plan, you’ll find a $512.00 charge on your next cell phone bill. Even so, many users have reported that as long as the abuse isn’t egregious (i.e. downloading more than a couple GB of data per month, using P2P programs, etc.), Sprint won’t bother. However, the risk of enforcement remains, and Sprint could tighten up its standards for enfrocing the TOS at any time.

Lastly: This updated profile (which you shouldn’t download, ahem) is not guaranteed to work with the Cingular Version of the Treo 650. Early reports indicate that the profile will not function correctly, so definitely do not do this if your Treo 650 comes from Cingular.