dj_stick

The following has been tested on a Macbook Air 1,1 with OS X 10.5.7, iTunes 8.2 with Airport turned off and an iPhone 3G (1,2) on the Optus (Australia) network, also with Airport turned off. Screenshots to come soon

Activating Tethering Requires OS 3.0

Tethering, by default, was not activated on my iPhone, and when navigating to /Settings/General/Network and pressing Activate Tethering, I was prompted with a message telling me to contact Optus to activate.

Instead I contacted google, and found a rather helpful site: http://help.benm.at. Navigate to that page using Safari on your iPhone, click Mobileconfigs - download, choose your country, then your network.

You'll be prompted to install an unsigned network configuration, once you've accepted it - tethering should automatically be enabled. Navigate back to /Settings/General/Network and turn on tethering!

IMPORTANT When you next connect your iPhone to your computer, iTunes will prompt that there is a carrier setting update available (or at least did to me) DO NOT INSTALL THIS - it'll disable tethering, and you'll have to re-enable it again. Not sure if this is network specific though


Setting up a Mac for Tethering (USB)
Requires iTunes 8.2 or later to work, and probably OS 10.5.7. What stumped me was that I could not get tethering to actually work until I'd actually booted up iTunes (Not sure if this is a Mac only occurence, but I'll test in Win 7 later)

However once iTunes had been launched, and my iPhone connect via USB, OS X's Network settings popped up and told me I had a new network connection, which was working perfectly fine - tethering complete! The iPhone shows a flashing blue title bar with Internet Tethering clearly visible

Bluetooth
Tethering via Bluetooth is also possible, just in case you don't want to have a cable hanging out of your laptop (or like me only have a single USB port) however for some reason when pairing my Macbook Air and iPhone, they wouldn't stay connected - I'll keep trying throughout the day to see if I can figure out what I'm doing wrong - Ironically it's exactly the same problem I had when trying to tether my old WinMo HTC Touch.

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Zardon

good info Chris

craig5320

Shame O2 are nailing UK customers for tethering, it was almost a viable option til they announced the costing.

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Zardon

havent read that Craig, whats the fees?

dj_stick

starts at 14.68GBP ontop of your existing subscription according to O2 to charge extra monthly fee for iPhone tethering -Times Online

with my network it's going to be AU$9.99 per month just to enable tethering, while using the existing data allowance in the contract

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Zardon

thats a fair increase to the monthly bill. bit disappointed in O2 for charging that much.

Mac Daddy

Interesting info Chris thanks for taking the time mate

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"My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

bananaman

Hopefully O2 will see the light and reduce the pricing, no incentive to sign on at those prices. I think it is actually cheaper to get a separate plan from either vodafone or O2 with a dongle

anyway, think i will give this a try when i have a few minutes on my hands

Thanks for the info

PS. Been a while since i was around here - good to be back

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tastyweat

That's a crazy price for tethering over here - shame.

It's a bit dodgy that they want to start charging for data when the contract clearly states that you have an unlimited data allowance!

And also... they don't seem to be informing people of this - I only just found out by reading this thread. So people could start racking up gigantic phone bills without a clue.

Or do you have to call O2 to enable tethering?

At those prices... it's certainly not something I'll ever be using. If some data allowance had been included with the contract... I may have used it every now and again with my netbook... but 15 quid a month!?!?!

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SeraphicSorcerer

In the USA If you get the enterprise data plan it includes tethering, that's retarded.

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tastyweat

How much does the enterprise data plan cost and how much data does that include?

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SeraphicSorcerer

Well in the USA "unlimited" means approx 5 GB, But only if you repetedly go over it, I can play wow on my iphone at work and it works fine.....

For me (since I have a business discount its 5$ more then the normal plan which makes it 45 (But I pay 33.75$ data.... (Which is required for iphone service) On top of the voice... Total charges for the iphone I pay approx 100$ (US)a month

Basically for me it's all Discounted but price before discount is (U.S)
59.99
45.00
15.00 (text)
Discounted however it's below 100 (91.40) all together

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Zardon

hang on. you play WOW on your iphone in work?

ive heard it all !~

bananaman

It is my understanding that they have to enable tethering for your phone to connect but from certain websites it is pretty easy to download new carrier settings which enable tethering

obviously proceed with caution...

hopefully O2 will change it so that tethering is free up to something like 200mb a month

Really annoying thing is you cany even tether to connect to wifi zones without paying... seems odd to me...

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tastyweat

Yikes... quite pricey then... I take it those are all 'unlimited'

I pay something like 25GBP/month which gets me 600minutes/500 texts and 'unlimited' data... obviously not inclusive of tethering. Which is more than I ever use.

I get a discounted tariff because of a friend who works at O2 - the tariff I'm on is normally 35GBP (about $50USD at the current exchange rate)... then the 3GB data tethering plan would make it to 50GBP or about $70-75USD/month

Very strange... and yes... something like 200MB/month for free would be perfectly fine for me as I would use it once in a blue moon. Would just be nice to hook it up to the netbook every now and again.

Might have a look at these websites and try it out... only download a few kB and see what happens on the next bill.

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SeraphicSorcerer

No.. I tether it to my laptop and play.. I work in a call center during Gy Shift.. lmao

I bet you could play wow on the iphone though it runs on MAC OS X after all.

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dj_stick

it does run a version of OS X, but not the PPC or x86, so Blizzard would have to re-code a version just for the iPhone

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dj_stick

Update:

Updating your iPhone to v3.0.1 (SMS flaw fix) doesn't affect the carrier settings at all, so this tethering "hack" is still working

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