How to tether your Cosmote iPhone

Update: MMS may not be functional after updating your carrier settings with this profile.

The latest update to the iPhone firmware (namely version 3.0) allows you to tether your iPhone, that is to share your 3G mobile Internet with your computer via USB or Bluetooth. The sad thing is that some carriers won’t allow you to enable tethering, while others allow this functionality but haven’t updated their carrier settings to support it.

Cosmote is one of those carriers in Greece. I called their customer support to get informed that they’re having technical problems in enabling tethering on the iPhone but assured me that they’re working on it and will let me know. Oh well, I’m not a fan of waiting so did a bit of research and found this how-to article for iPhone tethering. Guess what: it worked!

You can go ahead and follow the steps described in that article. Keep in mind that the carrier settings file for Cosmote is named TMobile_gr.ipcc, so that’s the file that you’ll been playing with. Also, note that you’ll have to compress the whole Payload folder into a zip file (not just the bundle). Last, if you can’t select the ipcc file from within iTunes, make sure you renamed it from within the info window (Cmd + i) and not via Finder (hidden file extensions may not allow you to properly change the filename).

Once you update the ipcc file, reboot your iPhone and go to settings. At first, you may see that you can’t enable tethering (it pops up an info note that you need to call Cosmote customer care), but miraculously after a few seconds, it goes on. I’ve tried it out an worked, with an average maximum speed of 1 Mb/s over 3G (in an area with poor signal). Over bluetooth. Nice.

If you don’t want to get into all this hassle, DM me on Twitter and I can send you the carrier settings (ipcc) file.