I bought a Samsung S4 Mini which I think is probably a refurbished warranty return.  I'm pretty happy with  it.  Immaculate condition, and I'm surprised how well the display works given that it is essentially one quarter the size of my S4 that died.  It also seems to have a lot more free storage after I installed all my apps.

Whatever, i met my first snag with it.  I can't get it to tether.  The phone is branded AT&T (splash screen on startup shows the logo, and a request to check for updates goes and looks on their website) so I suspect this tethering issue is part of the tendency for mobile providers to cripple the ability to tether - I'm not sure why, but no doubt it's to stem some income leak.

So can I get around this?  If I could program the firmware image that the NZ S4 minis have in them, would this solve the problem?  Is that even possible?  Or am I looking at ...(cue lightning flashes, thunder) ... rooting the phone?