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Just to be clear, tethering your data connection has been available on the iPhone since version 3 without jailbreaking. Wireless hotspots have been available since iOS 4.3 without jailbreaking.

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Only for $20/month. There are things you can install on your Android (even non-rooted AFAIK), or on your jailbroken iPhone, that let you tether to your normal non-tether dataplan.

(At this point you can happily complain about morale or market issues relating to stealing that bandwidth; for the record: I pay the $20/month and am quite happy to do so.)

True, but there's a big difference between "jailbreaking makes these things possible, where otherwise I would be screwed," and "jailbreaking lets me get things for free that I would otherwise have had to pay for." The GP appeared to be about the former.

However, a data plan that does not allow tethering is a carrier issue, not a phone issue. Here, tethering is included with virtually all data plans, across all of the major carriers.

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