So today marked the release of the 3.1 OS + iTunes 9 upgrade from our friends in Cupertino. For those of you that have not partaken in the bounty of iPhone tethering, http://help.benm.at/help.php was a nifty little site that enabled an option on the Settings app in the iPhone which allowed one to enable and disable tethering. The only caveat was that you had to have iTunes running on your windows machine to get a (very fast) connection on your pc.

3.1 has removed this. I've confirmed that this is no longer possible. AT&T, not satisfied with the amazing success of the iPhone, desires to stick its consumers with a 'tethering fee' of $15 per month. This fee is ON TOP OF the unlimited* data plan.

So let me get this straight, AT&T asks Apple to disable the mobileconfig that allowed tethering so that AT&T can turn around and sell the feature the phone comes with for $15 per month?

Sounds alot like nickel-and-dime antics. I think I'll be jailbreaking my phone once again... just waiting for the iPhone Dev Team to work their magic.