Looks like Windows Phone DOES Support Tethering After All… Perhaps!

 

One of the biggest disappointments people have expressed about the first release of Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 smartphone OS, if the lack of tethering, the ability to connect your computer to the Internet using your phones data connection.

Now it has emerged that Windows Phone does support tethering after all, up to a point, after a fashion and only, it would appear on the Samsung Focus and Omnia 7.
WMPowerUser.com broke the news today with what can only be described as a hack to switch the feature on.

1) open your phone and dial “##634#” then press call. You’ll go into the Diagnosis Menu (going forward this icon appears in your programs so you don’t need to dal that again). This is just a phone dialer with a little icon and note on top.
2) In diagnosis mode (phone dialer) dial “*#7284#” and a dialogue will pop up letting you change the settings from Zune to modem or “Modem, USB dialog.”. You want to go with “Modem, Tethered Call”. It will restart you phone after a few seconds. Once it restarts, connect to your PC over USB and drivers will be installed on your computer. Now go to your connections on your PC and you’ll see that a Samsung modem was added.
3) on your PC you need to change the setting for the Samsung modem. If you set it to prompt for user name you’ll be able to put in the login info. This is all it is:
number: *99***1#
user name: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
password: CINGULAR1
Go to connect and BAM. You’re tethered. I will tell you it went to ‘register’ the first time and failed. The second time worked and now I can connect and disconnect by plugging/unplugging my USB cord and I’m tethered baby!

This will enable USB tethering for the Samsung handsets and follows news from a couple of months back that Brandon, Watson, the Director of Developer Experience for Windows Phone 7 told tech blogger Paul Thurrott that tethering would be available but that it would be up to individual carriers whether they wanted to enable it.  This was later officially denied by Microsoft.
We can all expect a forthcoming update to the OS to include full support for tethering, but for now Samsung owners have something more to smile about.