Step by step guide to get tethering & Visual Voicemail to work together. Mac version

[HiFiGuy528]

Well, I followed my own instructions posted here to hack my friend's iPhone 3gS and it worked perfectly.

 

[bullvselephant]

Confused on step 5

After I navigate to the ipcc file, I cannot click it.. it is greyed out. How do I tell Itunes to accept this file as an update?

 

[hellrider]

Does AT&T charge for this unofficial tethering? Has anyone received a bill for it?

 

[GAdawg]

I would like to use tethering, but wanted to make sure this would not cause extra charges. If anyone knows the answer that would be great

 

[bossku69]

I would like to use tethering, but wanted to make sure this would not cause extra charges. If anyone knows the answer that would be great

I went into the AT&T store today and inquired about how long the contracts are for the USB data cards (I thought it was 1 year, not 2). When the guy asked, I said I found out how to tether from my iPhone and I have no use for the $70/mo bill for the USB thing anymore.

He told me that he heard rumors that AT&T will be watching accounts to see data usage spikes on user accounts and they will be sending you a notice that you have violated their terms of service, as well notifying apple that you "hacked" your phone and the warranty will be void.

LOL, I'm just relaying the message but they seem to be pretty pissed off about it. He asked me for my mobile number to check my bandwidth on my plan, but I declined... I didnt want to be put in their system already

Ive also heard (from other reps) that AT&T will be selling a "tethering" data package which will be $30/mo for 250mb or $50/mo for 5gb on TOP of your current iPhone data plan.

IMO, I think this is BS and there is no way for them to know, other than if you go over your 5GB of bandwidth on your iPhone data plan. I had a Nokia setup with tmobile for a few years and tethered off that for the longest time and they had no clue, but when I asked them about it, they wanted me to signup for a different data package.

 

[jctonett]

Personally, I don't think there is anyway they can enforce this. I pay for unlimited data plan on my iPhone; where I come from, "unlimited" means "unlimited". Hacking your phone to tether is at your own risk. It is your property. It voids the warranty, but that's your problem, not AT&T's.

I have a broadband wireless card that I used a lot when I travel, with an AT&T unlimited data plan on it, too. I changed jobs May 1, and haven't used it since. I rather doubt AT&T is going to give me a credit for the bandwidth I haven't used.

Same philosophy...

 

[iomar]

Well, I was excited when I saw this post because I have problem getting my visual voicemail and my tethering work at the same time. It is either tethering or visual voicemail. Nevertheless, after looking at the steps it seems it is still not very clear for me. In the post it says download this and there is nothing to download. In addition, I have already installed a file in my iPhone 3Gs and I was able to use my tethering but to get my visual voicemail working I have to reset my network sittings on my iphone and when I do that my tethering goes away. So I have to do the same steps again to bring it back and loose my visual voicemail. I would really appreciate someone show me how to get my phone in the original state before I downloaded the little file to install by holding option and hitting restore on my itunes. I want to start all over to have both tethering and visual voicemail at the same time.

I really appreciate any kind of help I can get.

Thanks,
Omar

 

[Dominus]

Is it possible this doesn't work anymore? I couldn't get the tethering option to show up, even though I'm pretty sure I followed the instructions to the letter, even downloading 3.0 from scratch (and losing some sweet artwork and sounds).

 

[NotSoSuperDave]

Bugs. It's Buggy.

So I got tethering to work. Finally. And then a couple hours later, got VM fixed. So much for a "clean" version. Now, I can't send group text messages. Not picture mail - straight up text - to more than one person. Doesn't work. pain in my @$$. Oh yeah - picture mail doesn't work either.

 

[zryall3]

Update question on Tethering iPhone and vis voicemail

I previously loaded the Benm file and tethering worked great until I discovered that it had disabled my vis voice mail. I'm up for trying the method listed here but wonder if my being on iTunes 9.0.1 will still work rather than 8.2. Also, I've heard that going to phone os 3.1 disables any tethering workaround in place. Is this true?

There are so many threads on how to do this but ALL of them are missing one or two important steps. Either you get tethering to work but no visual voicemail or the other way around. I want to post this "clean" one page DIY to save others time reading multiple forums to get both features to work.

So here you go. Please let me know in reply if this worked for you, or not.

From http://www.9to5mac.com

run a little command in terminal (Make sure you are on OS 3.0 on a 3G iPhone and iTunes 8.2):

defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE

After that, the steps become a lot more simple.
1. Download this file (for AT&T) and mount the disk image (thanks Gizmodo) for other carriers, try here.
2. Option-click on "restore" in your iTunes with your iPhone attached. Browse to the opened disk image file and hit OK. It will update phone settings for a few seconds.
3. You have tethering. Now go into your iPhone/settings/general/network/Internet Tethering and turn it on.
4. With the USB still connected. Go to System Perferences>Network
If Ethernet Adaptor (en3) is NOT on the list to your left, add it and hit Apply

5. You should now see the pretty blue "tethering" screen on your iPhone.

Setup Bluetooth:

1. Go to System perferences>Bluetooth>+ and set up bluetooth as instructed on your Mac.
2. Now connect as show in screen shot.

Setup Visual VoiceMail:

1. Keep the phone connected to iTunes and option + click Check for Update
2. Navigate to your "username"->Library->iTunes->iPhone Carrier Support
3. Select the file contained within "iPhone Carrier Support" and proceed

Carrier file can be found here (scroll down to post#11) and follow the steps.

4. Your VM should be set and you should NOT see Cellular Data anymore. I wrote this while tethering. Hope this helps.