There news have made several rounds already, but there wasn’t any specific guide on how to get MMS and network tethering working on the new 3.0 iPhone 3G firmware, released to developers a few days ago.

Several guides have been posted, but they all more or less copy & paste what is found in the original instructions, for example, CrunchGear posts this but doesn’t credit the original source. It’s not their fault, as these kinds of stories get posted and reposted so much it is hard to know where they originated. Anyway, here is a guide to make your iPhone 3G send MMS and tether on Movistar Spain. All images are thumbnails, click on them to see a larger version.

Warning: Before you start, remove any Bluetooth pairing between your Mac and iPhone – the pairing needs to be done after this procedure in order for the Blueetoth PAN network adapter to be recognized. Make sure you remove the pairing on both your Mac and iPhone.

1. Update your iPhone 3G to firmware version 3.0

Unless you are a registered iPhone developer with Apple, you don’t have access to this firmware. Don’t even ask – if you are a developer, you already know where to get it. Simply extract the firmware image to your desktop or other folder, and Option-click the ‘Restore’ button in iTunes’ ‘Summary’ tab. The rest is self-explanatory. As I’ve reported before, it’s better if you setup your iPhone from a previous backup after the firmware upgrade completes, rather than as a fresh new device.

2. Download the updated carrier settings file for Movistar

For your convenience, download this file, Telefonica_es.ipcc, which contains updated settings which enable MMS sending (not tested receive yet), and tethering on your iPhone. Save the file to ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Carrier Support.

The file adds the MMS APN configuration, the tethering mask (-2) to the Internet APN, and various settings that enable MMS and the editing of the APN on the iPhone’s Network Settings.

3. Update the carrier settings

With your iPhone connected over USB, Option-click the ‘Check for Update’ button in iTunes’ ‘Summary’ tab. Browse to ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Carrier Support and select the file Telefonica_es.ipcc. The update takes only a couple of seconds.

4. Reboot your phone

5. Enable MMS and send a test message

Go to Settings -> Messages on your iPhone, and turn on the MMS Messaging option:

On your Messages application, you will see a new icon when you write a message:

Tap the icon to bring up a menu which lets you take a new picture, or select an existing one. Results for taking a new picture are flaky, and for me they didn’t work, so I just took a picture using Camera and chose it later:

Type any text you want to add and hit Send. This is the result:

6. Tether your iPhone to your Mac over Bluetooth

First, you need to pair your iPhone. From the Bluetooth menu on your Mac, select ‘Set up Bluetooth Device…’. Choose ‘Any device’ from the options, and follow the normal process, entering the PIN code when requested. After your device is paired, leave the ‘Use this device for networking’ option checked. You will get a message telling you a new network device has been added, ‘Bluetooth PAN’. Go to Network Preferences to see the new adapter:

7. Connect to the Internet

Simply click the Bluetooth menu, and the Connect to Network option in your device name’s submenu:

The iPhone’s screen will shortly show a blue bar at the top indicating you tethering is active:

That’s it! I ran a DSL speed test on the connection, and this is the result:

Quite impressive!

I’ve been fighting with Movistar over the last couple of weeks over the iPhone‘s simlock that keeps it tied to their network, as I want to be able to use other SIM cards when I’m travelling. I don’t want to break my contract with them, but even so I offered to pay the cancellation fee in order for them to unlock my iPhone. In the contract that I signed, the cancellation fee applies to the service, not the terminal, meaning that if I cancel the service before the 24 month commitment, I have to pay a penalty. Nowhere does it say that the terminal needs to be locked to Movistar for the commitment to remain. In other words, they care about the monthly fee that offsets the lowered terminal price, they could care less about the phone itself.

So far, events have gone like this:

Day 1: Called 609, the Movistar customer service line, and asked about unlocking my iPhone. I proposed to pay the cancellation fee even though I was actually keeping my contract. The reply was that I needed to go through 12 billing cycles (eg 12 months) before they could unlock my iPhone.

Day 2: After rechecking my contract over and over, I found no clause stating the 12 billing cycle requirement. Second call, I am told the same, that there is no way to unlock the phone before 12 months have passed.

Day 3: I call them again, this time threatening to cancel my contract, in which case I would still be paying the penalty I was offering to voluntarily pay, but they would be left without the 21 months of commitment I had left, never mind the 9 months that supposedly had to pass before they could consider unlocking my iPhone. The maths are so obvious that it’s hard to see why they resist: I offer to pay around 350€ and keep my contract which runs at a monthly minimum of 60€, giving them a total in 12 months of 500€. Otherwise, I pay 350€ and they lose the extra 150€.

Day 4: I get a call back from customer service, telling them that they cannot unlock the iPhone 3G. I ask them to repeat that. “We do not have any means to unlock your iPhone even if we wanted to, Apple will not allow us to request unlock codes, as this terminal was released exclusively with Movistar“. WTF? In other countries you can unlock your iPhone through iTunes, after the operator gives you an unlock code, and they also have the device on exclusive country-wide deals with Apple – what gives?

Next step will be to contact Apple tomorrow and see if this is actually true. If it is, next step will be to start a formal procedure with the goverment department that deals with consumer issues.

If anyone knows exactly what the “network settings” are, feel free to comment. This was pushed to my iPhone by iTunes a few minutes ago, without further explanation.

Today I finally managed to get my hands on a 16GB black iPhone 3G. It almost didn’t happen, and the story is long, so maybe I’ll write another post about it – but suffice to say that it has been yet another day of missinformation, lack of professionalism, and general crappy image given by Telefonica Movistar.

To be honest, the thing that had me intrigued was how much one would have to pay were the contract terminated before the 24-month commitment was over. It turns out that it’s 400 Euros if you have the 20 + 15 contract, and pay 200 Euros for the iPhone at the store. So, for 600 Euros you should get an unlocked iPhone 3G. I think by law operators are forced to unlock your phone if you pay the termination fee, but I am unsure about this – anyone know for sure?

I have been reviewing Telefonica Movistar’s iPhone page, where they list the various pricing plans available. The short version: cheapest iPhone you can own, having to stick to a two-year commitment is 845 Euros, if you switch to Movistar from another mobile operator, such as Orange or Vodafone. This is the 8GB version, with a base price of 299 Euros, and a monthly minimum bill of 24 Euros. If you opt for the 16GB version and the most expensive plan, which will set you back a whooping 115 Euros a month, you can have the iPhone for zero Euros…but you will have paid 2.760 Euros after two years!!!

There is no word on the legal terms regarding contract switching, so it’s unclear if once you pick a plan, you have to stick with it for the two years. Both data plans feature unlimited data on both the 2G/3G network, and Telefonica’s WiFi hotspots, but the cheaper plans drop in speed once you have used 200MB of data, versus 1GB for the most expensive versions.

What is very interesting to compare is the percentage difference in purchase price versus the total cost of ownership (TCO). The cheapest 16GB iPhone is 20% more expensive to purchase than the 8GB version, but at the end of the contract, it has only been 7% more expensive to purchase. It’s even more shocking that the 16GB iPhone purchase price for the third cheapest voice+data plan (55 Euro/month) is 122% more expensive, but the TCO difference is only 4.4%!

The bottom line of all this is – buy the 16GB version, you’re only paying at most 7% more, and you can fit twice as many songs and movies. For those of you wanting to pore over the charts, here they are:

My headline was going to be ‘completely fucks up’, but it seemed a bit too harsh for a title. The current timeline for the launch train wreck of the iPhone 3G in Barcelona has been:

10:20am: Visited El Corte Ingles, one of Movistar’s major distributors. They have received exactly zero iPhones. The queue is thus of exactly zero people.

10:25am: Passed this queue in Telefonica’s main Barcelona store, in the centric Plaça Catalunya:

I decided to skip this and go to the second main Movistar store in Barcelona.

10:32am: Arrived to the queue, much shorter this time, in the Ronda de Sant Pere store. People leaving the store with a very pissed off look, saying things like “and they didn’t see this coming?”.

10:35am: Confirmation that they had a total of seven (yes, 7) iPhones shipped to them, and they have all been sold. The queue is to sign up to a waiting list, WTF!!!

10:36am: I leave the store, and call one of Barcelona’s main Apple distributors, who was on the official retailers list that would have iPhones.

10:37am: The first time I get a 302 redirect over the phone. They confirm that they will receive one iPhone for display purposes today, but they have put up a website one can use to sign up…for a waiting list.

11:15am: Telefonica PR is saying that they could not have anticipated this level of public response, and are overwhelmed.

Now…they have been hyping July 11th for months now, and even setup a site one could sign up to be sent iPhone news – which by July 6th had over 140.000 signups! This is total incompetence, however you may want to make it look.

I visited this page which lets people give their details to Telefonica Movistar, and supposedly be sent information about the upcoming July 11th iPhone 3G release in Spain, for which they have exclusivity with Apple.

It seems that in earlier versions of this page, as iPhone Alley shows, Movistar showed a counter with the number of people that had submitted their details, but this counter is now gone. Worry not, however, as if you access this URL: http://www.iphone.movistar.es/cuenta_reg.php – it returns the number of signups to date. In the space of time it took to write this, the number went up by almost 30, standing at 141.723. Not bad, I guess the queues will be long at Telefonica stores this Friday!