AT&T still isn’t ready to offer iPhone tethering, according to the WSJ Digits blog. This news comes 4 months after Apple first announced that the iPhone would support tethering.

When an AT&T spokesman was asked about tethering, he said, “whenever we offer new features, we want to offer the best possible customer experience. For tethering, we need to do some additional fine tuning to our systems and networks so that we do deliver a great experience.” Translation: “Our network sucks and we aren’t ready to offer tethering.”

Though there is still hope. Just this week, AT&T announced that it wouldn’t block VOIP applications like Skype from using 3G. With luck this is a sign that they are beefing up their network that obviously couldn’t handle the amount of traffic the iPhone was throwing at them. Maybe tethering could be a surprise Christmas gift for American iPhone users?

[via Mashable]