How to tether the iPhone

Updated: October 20, 2009

Page 1 of 3



Tethering is using your iPhone's EDGE or 3G Internet access to allow your computer to access the Internet when no Wi-Fi is available.





Be warned! This hack may violate your AT&T Terms of Service for your contract. Please check before attempting this procedure.

The question that arises when people hear about this hack is, how does AT&T know you are tethering? AT&T can tell by examining the packets transferred through the iPhone. They can determine how the header is assembled, and they also note sustained data transfers and connections to chat servers as dead giveaways.

There is also an iPhone formatted site you may want to visit for tethering (when you don't have access to a computer) here.

You may also want to visit this site to try out their custom ipcc generator. It is only for those who are not using an official service provider, or who have a factory unlocked iPhone.

There is another mobileconfig generator site here.

There are three pages to this tutorial. Page 1 is for those on 3.1.2 firmware and who want to use a USB connection to tether with. Page 2 is for those on 3.0.1 or lower firmware who want to use a USB connection to tether with. Page 3 is for everyone that wants to use BlueTooth to tether with.

For those on firmware 3.1.2 use the following instructions.

Ever since 3.1 firmware came out, we have been left out in the cold when it came to tethering as the ipcc files are now signed. A hack was discoverd by "CleanAir" when looking in the CommCenter file. Here is a post from the iPhone Dev Team on this method. My tutorial will be based on this article. A simpler method of performing this hack may appear on Cydia in the next few days.

I want to give a big thank you to a couple other individuals for helping us out: "StealthBravo" over at the ModMyi.com forums who created the AT&T 6.0 carrier file that is critical to this all working. I also want to thanks "sand0s" over at the official iPhone Dev Team blog "forum" that found the exact procedure to make this work (it is not intuitive at all).

Step 1.

Download the appropriate CommCenter patch file from the iPhone Dev Team's article here. You should now have a zip file. Decompress it and you'll have a folder. Drag the file out of the folder and onto your desktop.

Step 2.

Login to your iPhone using an SSH client (like Fugu). If you don't know anything about SSH, then read this tutorial. Navigate to your /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreTelephony.framework/Support/ folder. Drag the file CommCenter to your desktop. It will copy it here when you do this.




You should now have this icon on your desktop. Yours may appear different.

Step 3.

On your Mac, go to your Applications folder, then go inside the Utilities folder. Launch the Terminal.app program. Enter the following commands into the Terminal, pressing return after each:






A new file will be created on your desktop called CommCenter-hacked. Delete the CommCenter, and CommCenter.patch files. Rename the CommCenter-hacked file to CommCenter. The CommCenter icon may appear different than the original.

Step 4.

Go back to Fugu and right click CommCenter and select Rename.




I appended ORIGINAL to the end of the file so if I could easily switch back to this version later.




Drag the CommCenter file from the desktop into Fugu. You should now have two CommCenter files.




Right click CommCenter and select Get Info.




In the pop up window that opens, make sure your check boxes match these. You should also see the number 0755 below this. Click the Apply button.

Step 5.

Download the AT&T 6.0 modified carrier file here. Decompress the file and you will have a folder. The ipcc file is inside.




Launch iTunes with your iPhone connected. Press the Option key on your Mac and click the Update (or Check for Update) button.




Navigate to the ipcc you just downloaded. Select the file and click Choose.




A pop up message will appear.

Step 6.

Reboot the iPhone. You can check that you are on the new ipcc by launching Settings, press General, press About and reading the Carrier field.

Step 7.

On your iPhone launch Safari. Head on over to http://help.benm.at




Scroll down to the Mobileconfigs button and press it.




You'll be a list of countries. Select USA (or your country).




Select your carrier.




Press the Install button. Confirm at the next screen by pressing Install Now. It will then install the new profile. Press the Done button.




Press the Home button on the iPhone. If you launch Settings, press General, then scroll down to the Profile field you will see US AT&T (or your selection) there. Respring your iPhone (with SBSettings or the like) or just reboot it.




Launch Settings, press General, press Profile, then press the Remove button, then confirm the deletion. It will take you back to the General page and you will see that the Profile field is gone. Respring your iPhone again.

Step 8.

Make sure your USB cable is plugged in. On the iPhone launch Settings. Press General, Network and turn your 3G on and then press the Internet Tethering button. Slide the Internet Tethering slider to ON.




I selected USB Only. You will see a blue bar at the top of the screen when you are tethering.




Make sure your Airport is turned off on your Mac, then surf to a website. Look at that, it works!





Yes, visual voicemail still works. You will be able to receive a call while tethering. MMS still works.

Don't forget to slide the Internet Tethering slider to OFF when you are done!




You can check your tethering data usage by launching Settings, pressing General, then pressing Usage.







If you want to see how to set this up over BlueTooth, then continue on to page 3 of this tutorial by clicking here.

For those of you using 3.0/3.0.1 firmware click here for tethering instructions.