Among the laundry list of complaints some users have made about the iPhone, one is that you can’t use the iPhone as a modem for your laptop. While it’s convenient to have this always-on connection to the Internet, sometimes you want to take advantage of it with a big screen and a full, real keyboard. I know it’s one of the things I miss about my old Motorola E815.
But, with a little elbow grease and hackery, it is possible to share the iPhone’s net connection with your laptop, a process called “tethering.” The folks over at Lifehacker have put together a tutorial showing you how to accomplish this feat of derring-do. It’s worth noting, however, that it’ll require you to jailbreak your phone, so if you’re not comfortable doing that, well, this probably isn’t for you.
That would be useful on a 3G iPhone (hence it will probably be further disabled).
I am not 100% sure of this one but i think if AT&T finds out that you are doing this( and there are ways) they will terminate you, I think the Instant Messaging port is one way they could find out
I doubt that they would bother. I have the cheapest AT&T internet plan at $10/mo for 5 Mb that is supposed to be used for e mails, wap and the web on one's phone only - they charge a fortune for PDA plans, blackberrys or laptop connections. I have never used the phone alone (wouldn't know how to do it) - I always use the phone as a modem for either my Palm or my MacBook Pro and don't think they care- if for no other reason, because EDGE is too slow for any serious data traffic.