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I finally got around to enabling the Internet Tethering feature for my iPhone. I captured some screenshots for people to see how easy it is.

Also, a big thanks to BenM’s blog for making it easy for all of us!

NOTE: You will need to upgrade the iPhone OS to 3.0 or higher in order for this to work

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During the frenzy of holiday shopping, I went to Best Buy to do my part to help out the US Economy and Retail Sales for electronics. Browsing through the Best Buy Mobile section of the store I came across this sign. Best Buy is offering to pair your bluetooth headset to your new mobile phone (purchased through them), by using their Geek Squad service. Great. They are being helpful and provide value-added services.

But what I find amazing is the fact that they are assigning a $9.99 value. I would proposed that pairing a headset to a phone takes about 5 minutes. Based on that they are creating a service that costs $120/hour! I looked on the Geek Squad website and I could not find this service listed. It’s only available at the store at the time of purchase. They won’t go to your home or office and perform the service there. But the closest comparable is the Standard Wireless Networking Service (In Home/Office) for $119.99. So this seems to validate their cost model to charge.

In contrast, I asked Store Reps at AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon and they all said that when a customer buys a new phone or even upgrades a phone, they try and ask if they need a bluetooth headset and are willing to pair the devices at no extra cost.

But back to Best Buy. As a public company (NYSE: BBY), I tried to sift through some of the 10Qs to see if there was some mention about this, and not too much detail. Overall Revenue from Services line (Geek Squad) is about 6%. Is this a way to create artificial revenue? Maybe in a few months, I’ll go back to Best Buy and ask them if there has been significant uptake of this service or has it’s been largely ignored.