It's known as tethering, and while computer manufacturers were keen to offer the functionality, the mobile phone networks were furiously attempting to discourage it. Buried in your terms and conditions would be a clause specifying that you weren't allowed to do it (not that they could tell, particularly) and that if you accessed the internet via your phone, it had to be phone-based browsing: less likely to suck up data, and less likely to overload their network. But now that broadband dongles are being offered to link to those same 3G networks, attitudes are finally softening.

The big rumour is that tethering will soon be possible with the iPhone – or certainly in America, where AT&T are Apple's partners. Shortly after the launch of the iPhone App store, an app by the name of NetShare which enabled tethering briefly appeared, and then was suddenly banned by Apple, along with a clutch of other apps that they found to be offensive for some reason or other. So the functionality is clearly built into the device – somewhere – but disabled in order to prevent that luxury of using high-bandwidth applications on laptops on a connection that's meant to be iPhone only.

But the appearance of broadband dongles does make something of a mockery of the restriction, and it's good to see that it might be lifted in the future. I wonder, if and when it happens, that those people who've bought O2 mobile broadband and own an iPhone might be given their money back?

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