Tethering for Wifi, not Mobile Data

[NightFox]

Hmmm... with my new 3GS (O2, UK), in order to even allow me to select tethering on my iPhone I need to set up my account with O2 and pay for their "Internet Tethering Bolt On", as there's already a million threads on this forum saying.

However, what if I want to activate tethering but just use a Wifi connection to the internet, not a mobile/cellular one? And before anyone asks why the heck I would want to do this when my MacBook has Wifi and could connect directly, I'll explain: I stay in a lot of hotels, and in quite a lot of these you have to pay extra for wireless internet access. In order to stop guests sharing the same paid-for access, when you first sign in the system logs your MAC, so if any other device tries to connect using the same user ID/password, it fails. I'm sometimes travelling with 2 laptops and my iPhone that I want to connect, and I can't connect them directly without paying for access for each device. However, if I could tether to my iPhone I could use that as a single connecting device.

I know you can tether wirelessly, as I hacked my "old" 3G to use the O2 tethering, and noticed that it would use a wireless connection whenever there was one. However, I don't want to hack my 3GS and end up losing MMS or whatever, I just want to be able to *legally* use tethering, but without the O2 bolt-on I don't think I've even got the option.

 

[nintendoguy]

A better way to do this would to create an ad-hoc network on your macbook and share the internet using that. Then your macbook would be the hub and not the iPhone

 

[Phil A.]

A better way to do this would to create an ad-hoc network on your macbook and share the internet using that. Then your macbook would be the hub and not the iPhone

You can't do that if you're connecting wirelessly with the laptop, unless you have two wireless cards in it...

You could connect with one and share to the other one over a wired network though, which may work depending on whether both machines have an ethernet card in them

The tethering option doesn't allow you to share WiFi connections, only cellular data. It does give you free access to BT Openzone and The Cloud on your laptop though.

 

[NightFox]

The tethering option doesn't allow you to share WiFi connections, only cellular data. It does give you free access to BT Openzone and The Cloud on your laptop though.

Are you sure? I thought I had managed this last week with my old 3G using the common hack - once I could enable tethering, it seemed to be working over wifi - where I live the mobile signal is almost non-existent, but I think I was getting ADSLish speeds.

If I sign up to the O2 bolt on, do they send me a new carrier file to activate the tethering option? If I then cancel my bolt on, I assume that the tethering option would remain...

 

[DavidFL]

PDANet is the only way I have found to be able to tether your laptop to use your iPhone wi-fi access. (You need to use the USB cable to tether)

Of course, that will not work until we can jailbreak the 3GS and install PDANet.

If anyone has another way to do it without jailbreaking, I'm all ears. It is the only reason I have left to jailbreak.