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Recent rumour has it that Apple and AT&T are working on offering iPhone tethering plan. iPhone is based on BSD which means tethering is rather trivial. It is the cozy phone vendor and operator relationship which makes it difficult. It is like iPhone lives in a jail with AT&T and Apple as gatekeepers. Welcome to the world of jailbroken iPhone where every thing is possible and free/inexpensive. And no you don’t brick your phone, you don’t loose synchronization with iTunes. Sweet.
Here are the steps involved.
Step 1: Jail Break your phone. The best way to Jail Break is to use QuickPwn. The Jail Break removes Apple’s monopoly over the applications which can be installed on the device you paid for. It also installs Cydia and Installer the two leading independent software managers on your device. Before you worry about abuse, Installer and Cydia both are based on open source well proven tools. I have never seen any instability because of Jail Break. The guys who did QuickPwn have been good with quickly supporting new version of iPhone firmware.
Step 2: Start Cydia. Search for PdaNet from inside Cydia. PdaNet turns your iPhone in to a WiFi to Cellular router. They can also connect your PC and iPhone using USB cable. Let Cydia install it. PdaNet comes in two versions: Full and Free. The free version restricts you to web only contents while free version allows you to use other applications like e-mail. At one time $29 cost per license, this is no-brainer in my opinion. And no PdaNet guys don’t pay me for saying so. Once installed you need to set Ad-Hoc network between your laptop and iPhone. PdaNet guys have good instructions on how to do this. I think their site can use some redesign.
In fact I wrote part of this post using tethered connection. Look at the Speed Test result on the tethered connection:
iPhone Tethered Connection Speed
That is 2.3Mbps sweet. Compare that to 960Kbps I gets from iPhone browser based speed test. Is Apple artificially limiting download speed? Running iPhone 3G connection at this speed created large drain on battery. So, if you decided to tether, keep charger handy.