All the carriers in Australia offer free tethering and wifi hotspot as well.

Does Optus still charge for it? I know you can't use it on Pre-Paid.

I don't know about prepaid but my brother has an iPhone on a post-paid contract and he gets free tethering.

No, they don't. Fido requires a subscription to 1GB data minimum or the tethering will be disabled.

Yeah, same in Norway and Malaysia (where I live now).

here in the US people still buy it... and mind you the white one, because everyone have the black iphone.

The operators would be suckers if they give that for free instead of $30/mo

i'm happy with my nexus. don't even have to open the settings, i have a widget that turns on and off right on the home screen.

"The operators would be suckers if they give that for free instead of $30/mo"

So telcos outside the US are suckers? I'm from Norway and Telenor has tethering enabled and they are one of the biggest telcos in the world.

If you take into account they could be making 30/mo for each use FOR FREE I'd say they are :)

Or, what is muchmore likely, as corporates don't pass on free money ever, their market is not and so theycan't make free money like in the usa.

Well thankfully we have a more competitive marked in Europe then. Data is already included in the plans so charging for tethering which just uses data is absurd. So it is not telcos outside the US that are suckers. It is consumers in the US who are.