How I managed to tether my iPhone

o2 our good friend in the UK for iPhone coverage claim to be ‘better connected’. That’s their claim, not mine. Recently I needed to tether my iPhone to my Macbook Air – a simple process you may think. It should have been, but it wasn’t. Hence this blog post. You can read my story, or just cut the crap and read how to do it.

If you’re not familiar with tethering on the iPhone, it basically is a way of using your phone as a modem for your computer so you can get online. This is handy for the times when you’re out and about without Wi-Fi and require an internet connection. While Safari on the iPhone is good enough for most situations, sometimes you need the real thing.

To get my MacBook online I had a number of options:

1. Buy a 3G dongle – not a bad idea but that would use the only USB port on my MacBook. Sure I could get a hub, but that’s just ugly. I mean real ugly!
2. Pay a tenna a month to o2, even though I only need a connection occasionally and for light browsing
3. Do it the naughty way and jailbreak my iPhone and do it for free

You guessed it, I took step 3. Now i’m not condoning ’stealing’ o2’s data (even though we do have an UNLIMITED data plan on the iPhone). My arguement is that i’m simply using that same unlimited data through my MacBook. I can’t use more data as it’s all coming through the iPhone, just the same amount but rather than this being on my iPhone screen it’s on my Mac screen. I think i’m justfied in doing this aslong as i’m not taking the piss and streaming Spotify, iPlayer or YouTube  all day long. I bet my iPhone (and MacBook Air) that o2 don’t agree with me. That’s fine. As long as they can prove that I have been having a detrimental affect on their network with my infrequent usage, i’ll stop tethering illegally and pay.

You see I was quite prepared to pay for my tethering, that was until o2 cocked up – again. I went online and filled in the form and waited for my bolt on to be activated. I waited the required 24hrs and nothing. I waited a bit longer and still nothing. There was nothing else for it. I’d have to ring o2 customer ’support’ – so I did, and guess what – the website had gone wrong and my bolt on hadn’t been activated. I was told it would take another 24hrs to become live. This wasn’t good enough for me as I needed the connection that day. After explaining that I had left enough time for it to be activated I decided to cancel the bolt on and get the tethering working my own way.

Getting this done, does require you to jailbreak your iPhone. Don’t worry this isn’t as bad as it sounds. Before we go any further I take NO responsibilty IF your phone gets fucked, o2 catch you and cut you off, or anything bad happens. If jailbreaking your phone scares you then stop reading and go ahead and pay o2.

Step 1 – Do a full backup of your iPhone. Just incase this gets messy.

Step 2 – Get Blackra1n (available for Windows and Mac). This is the tool I used to Jailbreak my phone. It’s really really simple – honest!

Step 3 – Once you have downloaded Blackra1n open it up.

Step 4 – Connect your iPhone and quit iTunes if it starts

Step 5 – Hit the ‘make it ra1n’ button on the Blackra1n app.

Step 6 – Take a deep breath, while you ponder fucking up your phone. I’m just kidding!

Step 7 – Blackra1n will do some funky shit and then an alert will pop up letting you know that it’s complete.

Step 8 – Your phone should re-start. When it does, click on the Blackra1n application on your iPhone.

Step 9 – Once the app opens, install Snow – this will enable you to download a config profile to activate tethering.

Step 10 – Using Safari on your iPhone navigate to help.benm.at. Scroll down to MobileConfigs and follow the instructions to find the correct o2 profile for Pay Monthly.

Step 11 – Let the profile install and then re-start your iPhone.

Step 12 – Once re-started go to Settings > General > Network and there should now be an option to turn Tethering on. Follow the instructions on screen and you should be tethered up in no time at all.

Like I said, don’t take the piss with this. If you intend to be using a lot of data do the decent thing and pay. I’m only using tethering once a month if that for very light web browsing (contradictory but justified, if you don’t agree – that’s fine).