Halifax-based Tether announced overnight that it has extended its award-winning app – which allows simple and affordable laptop connections through smartphones – to iPhones.
Originally known as TetherBerry, Tether first released its product for BlackBerry in 2009 to end the frustration of being unable to find a WiFi hotspot when most needed. After a little more than two years, Tether now provides 500,000 Blackberry and Android users with a dependable Internet connection for their laptops and desktops, using their existing smartphone data plans.
“We're excited to help the legions of iPhone users find a simple, affordable and effective way to use their laptops while traveling,” says Tim Burke, CEO of Tether. “It’s impossible to ignore the popularity of iPhone among smartphone users, so it was only a matter of time before we released Tether for iPhone.”
iTether allows users to connect their laptop or desktops to their iPhone using a USB cord and access a fast, reliable Internet connection anywhere they can get data coverage. Tether’s simple download process takes no more than five minutes.
The addition of iTether – as the new $30 product is called at Apple’s App Store – is only one advance the Tether team has made in the past few months. Burke is also a principal of Densitas, a medical device company that is working on automated breast density measurement to help with the detection of breast cancer. Burke and lead software developer Stephen Hankinson both worked on the development of Skillz Systems, a computerized stickhandling game for young hockey players. And Patrick Hankinson has established the idea incubator Ninja Otter and is the founder of Compilr, an award-winning software that allows programmers to write code in the cloud.
Tether won Innovacorp’s I-3 competition two years ago, which brought with it $200,000 in cash and services. Other than that, Tether funded its development out of the founders’ wallets, bringing its first product to market only three months after it was conceived.
Disclosure: the principals of Entrevestor have done consulting work for Tether.
