As far as the defenders of Sprint's legal situation are concerned, forget it. Even when you use a phone tethered by a third-party cable, Sprint does everything in its power to detect your low-speed data stream going through the phone and to cut it off as quickly as possible.

Why? For exactly the reason the initial poster mentions: Sprint offers real, unlimited internet service only to people who use Sprint's PC-cards on a separate, and very expenive contract. If it were not for this, your phone would make a perfect low-speed modem.

I know because I don't own a treo, I own a Sanyo 4900, with the requisite software and cable and I've long since stopped using both. Living in a major city, I find wifi-connections in many of the places I go regularly.

With Sprint punishing me for using my phone as a modem instead of their card and separate service (i.e., handing them hundreds once in order to hands them hundreds every quarter) I can find no reason to be sympathetic toward their business model.