iOS 5 Bug? Free Tethering/Personal Hotspot

[Hummer]

I've had iOS 5 Beta installed on my Verizon iPhone since Monday, when it was released.

I only recently noticed that I now have Bluetooth + USB Tethering and Personal Hotspot enabled on my phone. I do not have these features applied to my account, and when I attempt to turn them on, I am not prompted to contact my carrier. I have tried tethering today to see if the tethering does indeed function and it does.

Has anyone else seen this? I've asked around and I've only had responses from people with AT&T iPhones saying that nothing has changed in that respect for them.

[rick98761]

Anyone try this on AT&T? I would love to save the $20 for a few months.

[haddman]

Originally Posted by rick98761

Anyone try this on AT&T? I would love to save the $20 for a few months.

Works for me on Verizon too.

[The DRis]

Just tried on my AT&T iPhone 4 running iOS 5. No go. Told me I needed to call.

[LaazyEye]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/534.32 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

I too am able to do this on verizon

[Littleman]

Personal hotspot did not work on my iphone ios5.
This (and battery life) is the main reason I reverted back to 4.3.3.
It let me turn the tethering (via personal hotspot) on but no other computer would recognise the new wireless iphone network.
ios5 bug number 4578754.

[DDustiNN]

Originally Posted by Hummer

I've had iOS 5 Beta installed on my Verizon iPhone since Monday, when it was released.

I only recently noticed that I now have Bluetooth + USB Tethering and Personal Hotspot enabled on my phone. I do not have these features applied to my account, and when I attempt to turn them on, I am not prompted to contact my carrier. I have tried tethering today to see if the tethering does indeed function and it does.

Has anyone else seen this? I've asked around and I've only had responses from people with AT&T iPhones saying that nothing has changed in that respect for them.

Image
Image

Why doesn't your status bar say Verizon? Is that an option without jailbreak now?

[Doctauri]

Yes, it's fully active on my Verizon iPhone as well. This tells me that it's strictly a software thing (i.e. no real verizon interaction needed to activate the personal hotspot feature, other than verification that they're stealing $20/mo from you). I would suspect an enterprising hacker should be able to do a diff between this version, and a future version that does require the $20/mo option and see what to fix to enable wifi hotspot through the built-in tool.

Doc

[Hummer]

Originally Posted by DDustiNN

Why doesn't your status bar say Verizon? Is that an option without jailbreak now?

Mine isn't jailbroken. My Verizon icon keeps disappearing and reappearing. Currently, it is there.

[eligoins]

Originally Posted by Hummer

I've had iOS 5 Beta installed on my Verizon iPhone since Monday, when it was released.

I only recently noticed that I now have Bluetooth + USB Tethering and Personal Hotspot enabled on my phone. I do not have these features applied to my account, and when I attempt to turn them on, I am not prompted to contact my carrier. I have tried tethering today to see if the tethering does indeed function and it does.

Has anyone else seen this? I've asked around and I've only had responses from people with AT&T iPhones saying that nothing has changed in that respect for them.

Image
Image

iOS 5 is loaded on my iPhone 4 with AT&T - no luck with personal hotspot, its not listed in the settings/network area - its simply not there. Any ideas on hot to activate this menu in the first place? I called AT&T to have them provision my acct for it - it should have activated that way, but it hasn't, any ideas? Thanks

[pmz]

Wonder if Verizon plans to one-up AT&T and offer free tethering with iOS 5???





...lol, not a chance. They collude with AT&T, they don't compete with them.

[nwcs]

If it's a bug it's very specific. I get prompted trying to set up the personal hotspot in 5. Hmm, notice that all of us on AT&T don't get this for now... sigh.

[nateo200]

Originally Posted by pmz

Wonder if Verizon plans to one-up AT&T and offer free tethering with iOS 5???





...lol, not a chance. They collude with AT&T, they don't compete with them.

That would be unethical and violate the anti-trust act. And we know AT&T has NEVER done such a thing like that right?

[HostMyApple]

Can anyone confirm that this still works in iOS 5 Beta 2?

Please let me know.

Thank You
B

[Dewroo]

I can confirm it still works on Beta 2.
This is fun, but is there any chance verizon will notice?

[Kubus]

I found that tethering is now greyed out on my gf's iPhone 4 on Telus (she has 500mb of data) while previously one could use it...

[shadrap]

Originally Posted by Dewroo

I can confirm it still works on Beta 2.
This is fun, but is there any chance verizon will notice?

They will if everyone keeps talking about it.

[tdar]

This behavior is controlled by the carrier file. During the ios4 beta, some enterprising developers provided a carrier file that left tethering on with out ATT's support even on the final version. The only problem was that in most cases your voice mail stopped working. I'd bet that some Verizon people will notice this at some point soon and it will be back as normal. But it does work for now.

Personally, I'm turning on tethering with VZ next week anyway, so to insure that they do not have that excuse to take away my unlimited data,al la ATT.

[Travisimo]

Originally Posted by tdar

This behavior is controlled by the carrier file. During the ios4 beta, some enterprising developers provided a carrier file that left tethering on with out ATT's support even on the final version. The only problem was that in most cases your voice mail stopped working. I'd bet that some Verizon people will notice this at some point soon and it will be back as normal. But it does work for now.

Personally, I'm turning on tethering with VZ next week anyway, so to insure that they do not have that excuse to take away my unlimited data,al la ATT.

Well there's no way I'm adding the $20/mo tethering feature and keeping it on my account just to avoid losing Unlimited data. I only use the tethering occasionally - certainly not enough to justify $20/mo. So I'm hoping you'll still be able to add/remove the feature without affecting the grand-fathered Unlimited data plan. Otherwise, I guess I guess I'll have to go back to my Jailbreak. Ironically, I don't mind paying for tethering when I use it. But taking away the choice to add/remove the feature when you need it would be a deal-breaker for me.

[DirtySocks85]

Originally Posted by Doctauri

Yes, it's fully active on my Verizon iPhone as well. This tells me that it's strictly a software thing (i.e. no real verizon interaction needed to activate the personal hotspot feature, other than verification that they're stealing $20/mo from you). I would suspect an enterprising hacker should be able to do a diff between this version, and a future version that does require the $20/mo option and see what to fix to enable wifi hotspot through the built-in tool.

Doc

What you're describing/asking for is what tetherme already does.

[Awjvail]

WAIT.

Verizon charges $20 a month for Personal Hotspot?????

Sweet baby Jesus. Here I am thinking that Canadians always get totally shafted when it comes to this sort of stuff... I get Personal Hotspot included!

[HostMyApple]

Hello,
Can anyone confirm that this still works in iOS update 4 that was released today.

Thanks!
B

[jap1198]

I'm on AT&T and when I switched the option to "ON" I got this (Check photo).
As far as I know, I'm not subscribed to the tethering plan. Does this happen to anyone else?

[HostMyApple]

So where you able to tether.

Also can anyone confirm this still works on verizon?

[Ksizzle9]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A5274d Safari/7534.48.3)

It does and has worked for me on vzw iPhone since beta 1. Thanks for 4gb of free tethering!