How to tether the iPhone 4
Now that it is finally available, a lot of users are beginning to tether their iPhones so that they can be used for Internet broadband access devices. This column explains how to tether your iPhone 4.
Tethering is the use of a mobile device such as a mobile phone to supply Internet access for another device. In this specific instance, we are looking to tether the iPhone 4 to provide broadband access for a laptop computer, That is the most common usage, and the procedure will be similar for all devices. Please be advised that this column pertains to an iPhone 4 that is not jailbroken. Therefore, there is but a single method for tethering. Although we do not recommend jailbreaking your shiny new iPhone, we admit that it opens up more tethering possibilities.
To get the ball rolling, you need to contact AT&T by phone, or simply visit your AT&T wireless account. You can speak ro a customer service rep to add tethering or simply use your iPhone account to activate the tethering service. If you have an iPhone, you already have a data plan, either the 200MB/mo DataPlus plan or the 2GB DataPro plan. If you used to have the Unlimited data plan, you probably still do and adding tethering may require you to give it up in favor of one of the two newer plans. If you are not required by the rules to do so, keep the unlimited account; it’s a much better deal.
If you are going to tether much at all in order to get broadband for your laptop or Wi-Fi-only iPad you’ll probably be eating up the data, so you certainly want the larger DataPro plan, and tethering will cost you another $20 per month. So right up front you have at least $45 per month, $25 of which (or $29.99 if you can keep the unlimited plan) is shared with your normal iPhone usage and $20 of which is purely for tethering. After you have set up the service, reboot your phone (directions here).
Once you have that taken care of, turning it on is not at all difficult. Go to the Settings window on your iPhone. Tap on the “General” link, then on “Network.” Near the bottom of that screen will be a link that says “Set Up Internet Tethering.” Tap on that link. Move the slider to turn tethering on. Select whether you want to connect via USB (just like you were going to sync your phone) or Bluetooth (you will need to set up the Bluetooth connection). Then, just go to the Networks pane of Settings on your laptop and select the iPhone from the list of networks.
Now you’re tethered and getting broadband (or as broad a band as AT&T gives you) from all locations that AT&T serves it (miserable though that is) and able to access the net just like you were connected from a WiFi location.
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