Last week, Apple proclaimed that iOS 4.3 was scheduled to hit this Friday, March 11th, alongside the iPad 2, but now we're hearing that the update may arrive a bit earlier than planned. According to BGR, iOS 4.3 will be released today at 10:00 AM PST, 1:00 PM EST, a few days earlier than the date Apple promised. Additionally, the tipster has attempted to shed some light on the Personal Hotspot situation, claiming that while the iPhone only supports three simultaneous WiFi connections by default, that number can be bumped up to five if a carrier wants it to be.
It'd definitely be a bit of a surprise if Apple decides to push out iOS 4.3 today, but hey, I'm not going to complain if we get to play with all of 4.3's new features a few days early. As for the whole hotspot thing, it'd be nice if all carriers decided to up the max number of WiFi connections to five, but I wouldn't be surprised if many decide to leave it at three. While I'm sure that there won't be a ton of users that end up connecting five different devices at once, those that do could end up sucking down quite a bit of bandwidth. By limited the number of simultaneous connections to three, a carrier could help to keep their network a bit more stable for other users.
UPDATE: Well, 1PM EST has come and gone without any iOS 4.3 goodness in sight. Jim Dalrymple of The Loop seems to think that we could see 4.3 arrive tomorrow, although he offers no evidence to support his claim. We'll be waiting tomorrow with an iTunes window open just in case, though.
