iPhone 3.0 Tethering on Prepay? (or OnAccount)

Forums › Apple iOS and devices › iPhone 3.0 Tethering on Prepay? (or OnAccount)

leemajors

73 posts

Master Geek

#35865 16-Jun-2009 11:47

Has anyone with iPhone 3.0 been able to set up tethering.

I got the carrier update this morning that updates your MMS settings and also enables tethering...

Well I use the word enables pretty loosely. It enables a button that enables a dialog box that tells you that you need to contact your carrier to enable it.

Because I'm not BFFs with VF at the moment (we're going through a rough patch), I didn't really want to call them and ask them to give me tethering on Prepay. And since it's not out until tomorrow (or maybe thursday) officially they probably will have no idea what I'm talking about.

So has anyone called them up and actually got tethering to work on Prepay... or even OnAccount?

Let us know.

leemajors

73 posts

Master Geek

#225566 16-Jun-2009 12:16

OK.. so I've been messing around with it for a while... seems like it almost wants to work. I'm pretty sure the problem is that I'm on prepay and tethering doesn't want to work on any other APN than the iphone specific one. And for no reason VF blocks up prepay users from accessing that APN.

So your out of luck with tethering and prepay, officially. I'm sure someone can mess with custom ipcc files and get it working. But it would be nice to see VF actually support a group of users that make up 80% of their user base.

8d52797c436

264 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#225596 16-Jun-2009 14:01

Well for starters you might want to check your user agreement, I havent so I'm not sure if this is the case, but a lot of providers dont actually want you to teether your mobile phone to a laptop e.t.c. I think it has something to do with the fact that they dont want you using huge amounts of data even thou you are paying for it cause of some problems it can cause them, or at least thats the rumor going on with the guys who wanted to teether the Android G1's to a laptop over in the states.

Also, I find it quite funny that you are complaining about Vodafone not supporting those on Prepay, when only last week there was a lot of OnAccount users complaining about the give aways e.t.c. that are only given to Prepay customers.

leemajors

73 posts

Master Geek

#225598 16-Jun-2009 14:09

8d52797c436: Also, I find it quite funny that you are complaining about Vodafone not supporting those on Prepay, when only last week there was a lot of OnAccount users complaining about the give aways e.t.c. that are only given to Prepay customers.

Yeah probably a grass is greener thing. But you get support. We pay for support. Still financially it works out many times better for me to be on prepay, that's why I'm on it. But I've never had give aways.

But the other thing is since I'm on prepay we don't really have a user agreement. I'm sure I could find one somewhere on the net maybe.

The main thing is, it makes no sense that only account holders can access www.iphone-vodafone.net.nz. Since we pay for every MB of data it doesn't seem logical that they would lock us out another way of paying them more. I understand that in the US and other countries where they have semi-unlimited/unlimited caps they would want to charge more for it, but not here.

We do get shafted for everything except SMS. We have really good plans available for that.

8d52797c436

264 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#225601 16-Jun-2009 14:14

Yeah the grass is greener thing is probably right. You might also find that even though you havent signed anything, you have agreed to a Terms of Service or something similar. For example, you agreed that they can wipe your account balance if you havent topped up in a year, or at least thats what it used to be way back when I was on prepay. never signed anything, but by using the simcard I had agreed to it.

The only reason they could want to prevent it is due to a much higher volume of traffic that could be possibly be generated by you having the laptop teethered to the iphone, which may cause problems in terms of reliability for other customers e.t.c. As I said, this is all speculation though, it may be completely wrong.

martin308

226 posts

Master Geek

#225850 17-Jun-2009 15:52

Im using the iphone APN and have an iphone data plan and get the same message.... wonder what the deal is?

8d52797c436

264 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#225852 17-Jun-2009 15:55

I found a post on the vodafon forums yesterday which basically pointed to the fact that Vodafone does not support it, but that may have just been when you had to jailbreak your phone to do it.

leemajors

73 posts

Master Geek

#225853 17-Jun-2009 15:57

martin308: Im using the iphone APN and have an iphone data plan and get the same message.... wonder what the deal is?

You should fine. A friend on account had no trouble. The other thing you might want to try is tapping it several times. Or connecting with safari to make sure you are definitely connected (often there is a delay after your connection has been inactive for a while).

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leemajors

73 posts

Master Geek

#225857 17-Jun-2009 15:59

8d52797c436: I found a post on the vodafon forums yesterday which basically pointed to the fact that Vodafone does not support it, but that may have just been when you had to jailbreak your phone to do it.

Do what? Tethering? Or Tethering on prepay?

porche20002

72 posts

Master Geek

#226021 17-Jun-2009 23:10

odd...

I'm on account but another post here said the apn for tethering is not iphone-vodafone.net.nz but the other one (forgot)

anyways mine mysteriously worked after trying for a few days on 3.0 plus im on account and dev

Link for before: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=76&TopicId=35978

kiwigirl8

34 posts

Geek

#226446 18-Jun-2009 21:20

I updated to OS 3.0 today and successfully tethered my iPhone to my laptop, and I am on prepay.

MrSteel

19 posts

Geek

#226534 19-Jun-2009 07:05

I'm on Prepay myself and the only way I could get tethering to work is by changing the APN to www.iphone-vodafone.net.nz before plugging in my iphone to my laptop.

Obviously as a Prepay customer you have to switch back to the www.vodafone.net.nz APN if you want to be able to access the internet on the phone itself again.

Annoying really. Wish Vodafone would just have one APN for all of us.

MattD

663 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#226576 19-Jun-2009 09:45

MrSteel: I
Obviously as a Prepay customer you have to switch back to the www.vodafone.net.nz APN if you want to be able to access the internet on the phone itself again.
Annoying really. Wish Vodafone would just have one APN for all of us.

or just an update the carrier settings to support tethering on both APNs

leemajors

73 posts

Master Geek

#226579 19-Jun-2009 09:49

MattD: or just an update the carrier settings to support tethering on both APNs

Yeah... but that would require two different settings files... or still for people to manually edit the APN. It's just stupid that VF will keep sending out carrier settings that overwrite the APN for prepay users.

Fine for me... but imagine if I gave my mum my old iphone and she had to work that stuff out.

MattD

663 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#226664 19-Jun-2009 12:52

leemajors:
Fine for me... but imagine if I gave my mum my old iphone and she had to work that stuff out.

agree and far from a typical Apple experience...