The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Australian iPhone carrier Telstra quietly enabled iPhone tethering this weekend, allowing iPhone users to now access the Internet from their computers via either USB or Bluetooth. Telstra has offered this feature on its other mobile phones for some time, but insisted that Apple would not permit it to enable tethering on the iPhone. Apple indicated, however, that tethering decisions rest with the carriers themselves, and Australia’s other three cellular phone carriers have been providing tethering access for the iPhone since shortly after the iPhone 3.0 update was released in June.
A list of the iPhone carriers around the world which provide tethering capabilities can be found on Apple’s Locating iPhone Wireless Carriers page.
Additionally, reports indicate that the iPhone has had a successful launch in South Korea. Sales of 60,000 units were noted for its first day of availability, representing 15% of the total number of smartphones that were sold in South Korea during the entire third quarter.
Even though South Korea provides one of the most advanced sets of mobile products and services in the world, smartphones still only represent 1% of the total mobile market in that country. KT Corporation, the iPhone’s South Korean carrier, hopes that the introduction of the iPhone will improve the popularity of smartphones in that country.
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