I really need help… I really enjoyed using my iPhone (3G) and loving it still. And having 3.1.2 update has been excelling the experience even more, as it gets more stable then 3.1.

But I do have some problems. Ever since I got this iPhone, the provider offer the iPhone hasn’t doing its job well.

Am glad since August ’09 both Apple & the provider seemed to agree to make this iPhone 3G sold in Indonesia be unlocked under 3.0. Thus I switched back to my old operator which I trust more then the provider selling this iPhone.

But, eversince 3.1 update, my tethering died. Eversince, I am on the lookout how to re-enable tethering back to my iPhone but without jailbreaking.

I find it very weird still, that even though the state of my iPhone is unlocked (Without any fee what so ever) Apple still locked its iPhone tethering to the original provider?

It is not like the provider’s the only one offering data plan here in Indonesia. INDOSAT, is in a lot of Indonesian mind, THE BEST DATA COMMUNICATION Provider, yet! Not the provider selling this iPhone. And it has a lot of data plan package which can be used for your mobile & through your mobile for internet connection.

Or perhaps Apple enjoy being called a greedy lier for selling an idiotic phone that can’t even used as modem. Even a 5 years old Sony Ericsson K700i CAN be used as a modem (a slow one) to connect to the internet.

I do however, respect Apple’s restriction to limit content sharing. Aside from copyright infringment factot, it also strengthen the phone’s name I Phone. That it should be my personal device and that the iPhone is all about me and not you. At some extend, it already enables photo sharring through a legit appstore 3rd party apps. Which is fine.

But restrict tethering to an obviously FU phones to only its original provider? That’s absurd, if not ridiculous.

Why don’t I just jailbreak it? No matter how annoying the provider is and that perhaps jailbreaking is the only solution, I refuse to have my phone jailbreaked. In my perspective, jailbreak is a 3rd party apps that somehow puts my device in a stupify state and not to tell Apple what its doing. Jailbreak to me would also mean giving somebody else to tamper with the already “I” phone.

I know most of us is not a brainy programmer, but at least we are all entitled for a comprehensive knowledge on how jailbreak really works. As far as I know, it write a stacks of continuos program which tricked the iPhone into reporting to Apple whether its used using the appropriate provider or not. (tried once and bricked my iPhone succesfully). Thus jailbreaking in some term is eating up my iPhone computer cycle, thus diminishing the processor capability if compared to an unjailbroken ones.

The knowledge that I need to know now is, how the hell they make such a modification. I find it hard to find it over the net. Coz as I found out so far is that the ipsw extension is just an Apple own extenion of a zipped file which easily renamed into .zip or .ipsw.

But as it is unarchive, they sealed the dmg files with some more password.

As for tethering effor goes, I thought it lies in the .ipcc files. But I was wrong. It has to be in the firmware that some how match a digital signature within the .ipcc files. If it didn’t recognize any, it will turn on the default setting hidden in the firmware instead of inside the modified ipcc file.

The CommPatch 3G lying around the web is I believe the key. But it requires me to jailbreak. I refuse a jailbreak. And I don’t need to SSH my iPhone from time to time.

So if any you guys happened to stumble into this reading and care to give me a how-tos hint on how to re-enable tethering without jailbreaking my device. I’d really appreciate it. And perhaps have it publish also. So when Apple decide to close that side of the hole, they’d consider why people decide to take matters into their own hand and finally give thought about this tethering block.

Tags: 3.1.2 firmware, enable tethering, iPhone 3G