Fido and Rogers Tethering on iPhoneOS 3.0

If you’ve uploaded a custom IPCC file in the past, then you won’t need to do this, but the majority of phones that have never been updated to allow tethering won’t allow for it without being updated.

My guess would be that at some point in the past you’d installed an updated IPCC file (perhaps during early betas?), but if not, I’ve no idea why it worked out-of-the-box for you. I’ve done it on three Rogers phones so far and all have needed the patch.

What it will do is make a small update to the carrier settings file. On the screen that comes up when you first tap the link, you can tap ‘More Details’ at the bottom for more info to see what exactly it will change – it’s just adding APN settings so the phone knows how to get your connection for tethering.

If you want to undo it, go into Settings > General and scroll to the bottom. You’ll see an option labelled ‘Profiles’. Tap that, and you’ll see fido_com.mobileconfig or rogers_com.mobileconfig. Select either one and you can see the information about it. If you don’t want it anymore, just tap ‘Remove’ and you’re fine.

This won’t void any warranties. Even in the absolute worst case, an update or restore of your phone would fix it, but it’s a simple procedure that I’ve done on six phones so far today.

You have to go into Settings > General > Network > Internet Tethering and make sure to toggle it on. Then when you plug in over USB, it’ll show up as a network device.

When you first plug in when tethering is enabled, you’ll get a dialog box. Click to open Network Preferences, then when it opens, click ‘Apply’ and you’ll soon be online. You’ll have to do the same thing with Bluetooth as well if you want to tether over Bluetooth.

What’s likely happening is that your phone got a carrier update already. Some users have reported that they don’t need these patches at all – tethering is suddenly enabled for them on its own. Some users, the tethering option goes away.

If your Visual Voicemail isn’t working, install the latest update – it fixed my VVM problem and still enables tethering.

If you absolutely, positively MUST get it back to original, you can do a backup and restore.

Some people get 3G tethering enabled even without this patch. It’s possible that you didn’t need the patch in the first place in order to tether, or that you don’t need it anymore.

Yes, this file should do the same thing as having a custom IPCC file. A few caveats:

1. It might be handled differently. In that case, there is a way to enable updating your carrier settings by uploading an IPCC file, even in the latest iTunes.
2. They could still ‘detect’ tethering by seeing how much data you use, and watching traffic patterns. If they see you torrenting or downloading a video from vimeo, they can probably be sure you’re tethering.
3. Anything you do outside of Rogers’ or Apple’s guidelines is up to you. I’m not following their stupid tethering rules either, but if you get billed extra it’s not my fault :p

Hmm, I happened to plug in my iPhone today and it worked for me. You could try to back the changes out using the instructions above and see if that makes a difference.

I spoke with someone earlier today who’d used the config above on his new iPhone 3GS and it was working.

I would check to make sure that tethering is still enabled (i.e. you hadn’t turned it off by accident), and that you aren’t on Edge or GPRS (tethering won’t work on either).

The problem, as I wrote in an update in the post itself, is because iPhoneOS 3.1. doesn’t support this update anymore. It won’t work.