As we reported earlier, the BlackBerry PlayBook officially went on the market today.  One of the most talked about issues with the tablet was its lack of native email and calendar clients.

It seems pretty clear that the PlayBook tablet plays best when paired with your BlackBerry smartphone with a “Bridge” application.  People can use this app to access their smartphone devices for the purposes of email, calendars, contacts as well as to gain access to BlackBerry messenger – and a whole lot more.

The thing about this bridge app is that it allows users to tether to a service provider’s 3G for free, without having to pay “tethering costs” of 20 to 30 dollars.  Since the new PlayBooks are only wi-fi capable, this is a necessity in order to access information on the smartphones. Some suspect that this might be the reason that AT&T has nixed the app on its BlackBerry devices.

In a statement reported at CNET, AT&T says that the app isn’t available because it requires further testing:

“We are working with RIM to offer the ‘bridge’ app to AT&T customers,” AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said. “We’ve only just received the app and we’re testing it now to make sure it will deliver a great experience to our customers.”

Many feel, however, that AT&T is simply miffed about the app bypassing the tethering fees.  Without this bridge app, AT&T customers who expected to connect their new PlayBooks with their RIM smartphones have been left out of the party.

Luckily for AT&T customers, a temporary fix has been found.  Head on over to crackberry.com for more info on the solution.  Hopefully for PlayBook owners and AT&T customers, users will eventually have access to the bridge app.