AT&T Supports VoIP on the iPhone

It’s been a long, battle with a lot of finger pointing, but AT&T has officially stated that VoIP over their 3G network will be supported, opening the door to Google Voice, Skype and other apps on the iPhone and other 3G phones. While VoIP applications such as Skype were previously available, they relied exclusively on WiFi connectivity. In a statement issued today, AT&T says they have taken the steps necessary to allow Apple to enable VoIP apps for the iPhone to run on their wireless network.

“iPhone is an innovative device that dramatically changed the game in wireless when it was introduced just two years ago,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets. “Today’s decision was made after evaluating our customers’ expectations and use of the device compared to dozens of others we offer.”

The finger-pointing reached a head when the Google Voice app for the iPhone was apparently held up indefinitely for review. AT&T has previously stated that approval of the app was solely in the hands of Apple. Apple appears to have been threatened by the Google app replacing much of their own device’s built-in phone functionality, particularly the visual voice mail.

Customers have been clamoring for this for a long time, and at least for, the ball is very clearly in Apple’s court.

Source: Mashable

Enable iPhone Tethering

Yesterday, Apple officially released the new iPhone OS 3.0 software update, which supports a slew of new features including the long awaited push notification and “catch-up” features such as support for MMS and tethering. Unfortunately, AT&T has said that MMS won’t be available on their network until “later this summer” and that tethering will be available eventually.

However, some bright minds have found a way to enable tethering on your iPhone right now, without jailbreaking. Just point your iPhone browser to http://help.benm.at/help.php and you can download and install a new configuration file for your iPhone and carrier. I tried it, and it worked! I was quickly able to setup a tethered Bluetooth connection on my Windows 7 laptop.

How do you enable tethering?

Once you locate the correct configuration for your carrier, download it directly on your iPhone, then reboot your iPhone. When it starts up, go to Settings > General > Network and you’ll see an option to enable tethering. Once you’ve done that, you can establish a tethered connection with your PC or Mac via either USB or Bluetooth. Surfing the web is actually not bad on 3G.

The same site also has the settings for enabling MMS, but I haven’t been able to find where to enter them.

Note that you enable tethering at your own risk. AT&T and other carriers may charge you for additional usage, if they figure out how.

via CrunchGear