Filed under: Hacks, Developer, iPhone
Dept. of "That Was Awfully Quick": eager devs enable tethering on iPhone 3.0
Update: We've heard from two separate developers (Ari Weinstein and Jake Marsh) that they've put together quick and easy methods for enabling tethering on 3.0 iPhones (an all-in-one tool and a full user guide, respectively). Check out the links for details.When something so appealing as the possibility of wireless Internet access anywhere you go is dangled in front of you, is it any surprise when you reflexively reach for it? After developer Steven Troughton-Smith inadvertently turned on the tethering controls on his upgraded-to-3.0 iPhone, several people made a deliberate effort to enable the feature. Posts on personal blogs and at the MacRumors forums testify to the successful quest, and there's a specific walkthrough posted and a UK-specific IPCC file kicking around.
Of course, it goes without saying that tethering your phone, in the absence of a carrier contract that permits such connectivity, is the sort of thing that may get you in a spot of trouble. Examples of such potential hazards include extremely large data bills, summary termination of your account, or hair on your palms. While jailbroken phones have been tethering for some time with few issues, past performance is no guarantee of future outcomes.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tim Davies said 12:50PM on 3-19-2009
Thanks for the link to my tweet anyone can contact me with regards to this subject
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SirCrumpet said 1:08PM on 3-19-2009
Aussie Devs can find their IPCCs ready made for them on the ever-resourceful Whirlpool Forums: http://bit.ly/Or4Mp
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Andrew Appleton said 1:15PM on 3-19-2009
Wow, this is pretty interesting/exciting. Congrats to all involved!
http://appleton.me/2009/03/teathering-in-iphone-30/
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Dyranios said 1:41PM on 3-19-2009
lol its funny how scared people in the US are to do this, I am on the iphone data package and wouldn't think twice about doing this and did it all the time with Netshare (pretty sure them letting me go to town using netshare means they will be ok with other means)
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Brian said 3:02PM on 3-19-2009
It's funny until AT&T sends you a bill for $1,000s of dollars. At this point, perhaps they aren't looking very intently for people with jailbroken iPhones using tethering since the phones seem to be bandwidth hogs in any case, but it's only a matter of time before they figure out how to track this and charge people for it. You can look at the forums that AT&TM hosts to find examples of people being charged for abusing the data plans.
Ross said 2:02PM on 3-19-2009
Thanks for featuring the ipcc.... tooks a while but we got there :) http://drop.io/o2ukipcc
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Tim Davies said 3:17PM on 3-19-2009
I would like to conform that the IPCC linked to in this article was the first publicly available hacked IPCC. Good job on getting the story straight TUAW. Seems many have been taking credit for the file by Erica, ross and myself
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Luigi193 said 4:52PM on 3-19-2009
Hey tim... how did you actually hack the file? I've always wondered what tools you would actually use to edit that. Do you use a hexeditor? I have no clue how you would start something like that...
If you feel like it, respond with a quick answer! I'm not afraid of an ultra-techy answer! I've been trying to increase my knowledge lately as much as I can and i've always been curious as to how people would crack something like that.
Tim Davies said 4:55PM on 3-19-2009
We knew it was to do with the carrier bundle thanks to the guy who took the first screenshots, so we visited itunes.com/versions to get our hands on a IPCC so we could see a recent layout we the wrote an IPCC from scratch (an IPCC is just a zip with a carrier bundle and XML stuff inside) adding/guessing which keys we needed to enable tethering. It was very trial and error.
jollyllama said 3:43PM on 3-19-2009
Gah. Yeah, tethering is cool, but wait till you see how much extra the carriers will want for it. I'm guessing at least $50 per month, and that's with a bandwidth cap.
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stevengreen said 5:24PM on 3-19-2009
As long as you can change the carrier bundle you should get free tethering
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Adam said 7:32PM on 3-19-2009
You can find the Canadian versions (Rogers and Fido) on my website.
http://www.adammcnamara.com/CanadianCarriersTetheringPatch.zip
www.twitter.com/adammcnamara
www.twitter.com/CapnCapacitor
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Kemmey said 8:23PM on 3-19-2009
To all the folks having trouble tethering with either usb or bluetooth - please notice that you'll need to either install the iPhone 3.0 SDK, OR just the iPhoneSystemComponents.pkg in the Packages folder in the SDK in order to get at least USB tethering to work. This was deducted from the fact that tethering only worked on my dev-boxes... Tethering now working perfectly on my Dell Mini 9 hackintosh...
Oh, and btw, if there are any Danes out there, I have written a custom IPCC profile for TDC / Telmore that will enable tethering...
Cheers, and thanks for the wonderful discovery!
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Sam said 1:25AM on 3-21-2009
@Kemmey:
Do you mind sending me iphonesystemcomponents.pkg?
I understand that I need it for USB tethering for my Rev. B MBA, since Bluetooth is out of the question. Thanks in advance.
David Buch said 3:46PM on 3-25-2009
Can you email me the TDC-file for tetehering??? Any luck gettin mms working on TDC.
cheers
David
davidbuch2@me.com
Sylvain Robichaud said 8:31PM on 3-19-2009
I for one am a staunch advocate for PUBLIC services and like it or not Enron fans universal highspeed untethered Internet is one of the services the governements has to intervene in if not outright own and opperate so every citezen has fair access to a more and more indespesible way of information and communication. If the greedy telecoms can't behave then the will and must be repremanded or nationalized. Neoliberal windbags keep quite and bow your head in shane pondering the state of the worlds economic system.
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John T said 10:50PM on 3-19-2009
Why would any consumer or user of an iPhone that isn't a developer (99% of users) care about this at all?
3.0 doesn't come out for monthhhs...
...and TUAW posting all the different ways people are tethering is only going to give Apple more examples of what they need to do to patch the break when 3.0 is finally released.
I'll be writing all about this on my website soon enough http://www.johnthrasher.net
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Jash said 2:26AM on 3-20-2009
there is a God!
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Chris said 6:54AM on 3-21-2009
Has anyone used a sniffer to see if any of the packets are tagged with something to alert that it is tethered data? The hacked tethers don't seem to do this so I wonder if any official stuff via Apple has added this to help carriers?
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iPhoneOS30 said 9:25PM on 3-22-2009
Hey, if anyone needs on a Developer account just shoot me an email!
Bobby@designgears.com
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