Even though the iPhone comes with an unlimited data plan, that does not extend to connecting via the iPhone from your computer – a process known as tethering. For this reason, you will not find an application on the iTunes App Store to help if you’d like to do this. In fact using your iPhone in this way falls outside the terms and conditions of your AT&T (if in the US) contract.
In Europe, tethering is pretty common place and I’d previously made Infra Red (in the good ol’ GPRS days), bluetooth and USB connections to various devices in the past to make this possible. It seems crazy to me that AT&T expects you to buy and carry around a second 3G device to plug into your laptop should you want to connect in this way. I suspect they are trying to raise their subscriber count (as a data card counts as it’s a separate MISDN). If AT&T are worried about too much data use on the iPhone plan, they should allow it by simply offering an opt-in – for a fee – to add this to your package.
I have both – a 3G iPhone and a USB AT&T connect card, but for the purposes of research, decided to try to connect to my phone anyway. It goes without saying that if you choose to jailbreak, install and tether your phone, you do so at your own risk and any breech of your contract with your operator/carrier is your own responsibility.
There are a couple of ways to do this, and one really simple way – however, whichever method you use, you’ll (unfortunately) need to jailbreak your iPhone.
Get of of jail…
To perform a jailbreak on a mac, there are some great instructions here
Once your iPhone is free, you will be able to use Cydia to install unofficial applications.
The MobileTerminal and 3Proxy Method…
The typical method for tethering your phone is to install two apps: MobileTerminal and 3Proxy (note 3Proxy is only available if your profile in Cydia is ‘Developer’ – to change this go to Cydia > Manage (at the bottom of the screen) > Settings (at the top of the screen).
Full details of setting this up are available all over the Internet. Try these if you want to use this method.
The only problem with this first method is that after quite a lot of work just to get everything installed, every time you want to tether to your iPhone, you need to go through the pain of setting up an ad-hoc network and adding SOCKS settings to your browsers network settings!
Cut to the chase with PDANet…
There’s a new app on the block which takes some of the pain away from this – PDANet. This app is nicely written – for example it checks your phones internet connection before you start – and all you need to do to use it is set up an ad-hoc network and you’re away. PDANet is also installable free using Cydia and you can get to 411 here.
Finally as of v2.x of the iphone, you cannot simply and easily edit the APN (Access Point Name) for different operators. I recently took my jail-broken US phone to the UK, bought a Vodafone SIM card and wanted to connect so I could browse (and call internationally using the great Jajah service).
Thankfully, if you can get a connection using WiFi (or setup your phone before you travel), you can use a great website (on the iPhone) to download new APN settings. There’s a tutorial here and you can access the iPhone site here—select ‘Next’ then ‘Set Custom APN’.
If you don’t know the APN of the operator you will be using, this seems like a pretty comprehensive list (although I don’t know how up-to-date it is). Remember any changes to the APN will effect your ability to connect to your default operator – so you’ll need to reset the APN when you use the device on your home network.
Good luck.
According to many reports, Google will announce it’s plans for a more open partnership with a range of handset manufacturers and operators on Monday.