Internet Tethering Coming to iPad [RUMOR]

When Steve Jobs said the iPad wouldn’t support Internet tethering, the hearts of many Apple fans sunk. It meant that even if you already owned an iPhone, you couldn’t use it to connect your iPad to the Internet, which could be handy in places with no open Wi-Fi connection.

Sure, you can buy the 3G version of the iPad, which gives you the freedom to connect to the internet almost anywhere, but it comes with additional costs.

Of course, it works both ways — if you want to share your iPad’s net connection with another device, you cannot do that either.

Now, however, a glimmer of hope has appeared for those longing for tethering support on the iPad. 9to5Mac has a screenshot from the beta 2 of iOS 4.2 (with the iPad running on the Swedish network 3) that shows a new section, dedicated to tethering, within the APN network settings.

Don’t get too excited, though. This type of tethering, if it ever gets implemented to a final version of iOS, would only let you share the iPad’s connection with another device, as opposed to connecting the iPad to the internet through an iPhone’s connection. Furthermore, 9to5Mac claims it could not replicate this new settings pane on an iPad 3G running on AT&T’s network, which might mean that the setting will be present only if the carrier allows it — and that might not be the case with AT&T.