iPhone 3G tethering officially on its way

By Sebastien Page on Nov 6, 2008

After several rounds of rumors about an official iPhone 3G tethering plan, it seems that AT&T finally decided to offer a tethering plan for 3G users. In an interview today with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, AT&T Mobility President and CEO Ralph De La Vega said the company is working with Apple to let the iPhone serve as a tethered wireless modem for laptops “soon”.

What does “soon” mean exactly? I don’t know but I think it’s about time that AT&T offers such a plan for business users that had been requesting this since the 3G came out a few months ago. Also unknown is the cost of this future data plan. I can’t imagine it being under $40/month.

Our jailbreaker friends out there know that there are a couple alternatives to tether your iPhone. The first on is iPhoneModem, which I haven’t tried myself. The second option is PDAnet, which I reviewed before. Both apps are free but are against AT&T TOS.

I am very curious to see what the adoption rate will be for this tethering plan.

Photo Gizmodo
Via Technologizer

 

iPhoneModem: the 10 second iPhone tethering

By Sebastien Page on Sep 14, 2008

It looks like someone finally did it. NetShare had tried but was banned from the App Store. NetShare was not very user friendly but they were the first iPhone tethering application out there.

Yesterday, iPhoneModem, an application for the iPhone that aims at making it really easy to use the iPhone’s Internet connection on your computer, was released in Cydia.

From iPhoneModem.com:

What is iPhoneModem

iPhoneModem is an application for the iPhone that aims at making it really easy to use the iPhone’s Internet connection on your computer. iPhoneModem is available for installation jailbreaked devices using Cydia or Installer package managers.

How does it work

On the Mac, iPhoneModem creates a WiFi network to be able to connect to your iPhone and automatically configures the network settings to use a Socks Proxy. On the iPhone it acts as a “Socks Proxy” effectively sharing the Internet Connection.

Why isn’t it on the AppStore

Because Apple has not yet (since July ’08) responded to our “iPhone Developer Program” application and because it has already shown reluctancy to approve sharing the iPhones Internet connection. The reasons for not allowing sharing or “tethering” on the iPhone are probably related to current AT&T contractual limitations. These limitations are not global, meaning that there are other companies/providers which allow it, and we do not believe that Apple and AT&T will maintain this for much longer simply because it’s clearly bad business.

How to Install

1. Jailbreak the iPhone (if you haven’t already):

2. On the iPhone use “Cydia” or “Installer” to install iPhoneModem – it’s filed on the Networking category. After installing a new App named “Modem” should be available on the iPhone.

If you cannot find it you can add our repository to Cydia. The URL is http://iphonemodem.com/cydia

How to Use it

If you have MacOS 10.5 (Leopard), first download and open iPhoneModem on the Mac, click “Connect” and then open “Modem” on the iPhone. Make sure that on the iPhone you are connected to a WiFi network named “iPhoneModem”, created by the Mac application. That’s it, you can start surfing the web.

If you are using Microsoft Windows, Linux or a previous version of MacOS, you’ll have to manually create an WiFi network between the computer and the iPhone and configure Socks Proxy with the WiFi IP of the iPhone and port 1080.

So far, iPhoneModem only worls for Mac but they say they are working on a Windows version.