Personally I don’t own an iPhone however I was glad to see when Apple  announced that the 3.0 software update would offically (and finally) support tethering. For those of you not familiar with the term, ‘tethering’ in cellular wireless is the connection of a non-mobile device (e.g. desktop computer, notebook computer, laptop computer), to a mobile, in this case, the iPhone. Yes, it was once briefly available by way of a 3rd party app by NetShare, however the app was removed, never to be seen again. Tethering was also possible using a jailbroken iPhone, however until now for the average punter it just wasn’t readily available.

Well that doesn’t matter anymore right? Wrong. With the telcos holding their proverbial cards close to their chests for as long as they possibly could, it was revealed that Optus intends to charge $10 per month for the privilege of using your phone as it was designed (click here for an article from The Age). What’s worse, the monthly charge doesn’t add to your data allowance and you have to phone Optus to request the service be activated, and we all love the chore that is talking to a call centre operator at Optus right?

Imagine if you pulled into a petrol station, filled up your car and then went to fill up a jerry can for your jet ski only to have the attendant come out and tell you there was a $10 surcharge for any fuel not used in your actual vehicle. The surcharge doesn’t actually get you anything, they don’t add anything to the fuel – it’s simply for allowing you to use it. You’d probably assume they were joking right? I’m confident that the majority of people simply wouldn’t stand for it and would take their patronage elsewhere. Unfortunately it’s not as easy to change mobile carriers, at least not until your contract is finished.

So imagine my glee when checking my Twitter timeline this morning to stumble across this link. It seems a gentleman by the name of Lincoln Stoll has created a page that allows you to specify your carrier and then receive a configuration file via download or email. Install the file and lo and behold, tethering is possible. I’ve had reports that here in Australia it works for both Optus and 3. Lincoln has included a disclaimer that he can’t guarantee your carrier won’t be able to detect the fact you are using your phone as a modem, so you should keep an eye on your bills. If worse comes to worst you should simply be charged the monthly fee leaving you exactly where you started from.

I’m hoping that some of you will find this useful and that if you find the attitude by your carrier as ludicrous as i do, don’t forget about it when your contract finishes.

All the information contained within this post is subject to become outdated at any time, so as Lincoln suggests, keep an eye on your bill. Finally, the jet ski reference was just an example – for the record I do not, nor at any time have owned a jet ski.

UPDATE 08/01/10: Optus users that enabled tethering whilst running OS 3.0 using the method above have reported that they have lost the ability to tether when updating to OS 3.1. That said, I unknowingly updated to OS 3.1 and retained tethering however it would seem that i’m definitely in the minority. For more info check out this thread on Whirlpool.