Image Credit: Gizmodo.com.au

One of the biggest gripes people had with the iPhone 3.0 software was the introduction of something Apple called “Group Mode” – that is, that an SMS sent to multiple recipients would be sent as an MMS.  In theory this might be handy, people can use reply-all and send responses to everybody involved.  However, carriers here in the land of Oz charge you per MMS!  That means if you’re just sending text, you’re paying double for the privilege.

While most carriers in Australia have wised up and fixed this themselves, you may wish to use some custom carrier goodness.  This week’s how-to is brought to you by Beau from our forums.  He has hand-crafted a cavalcade of carrier configurations for all of the major carriers.  Download links and instructions on how to install them are available following the jump.  For those of you on Optus or Telstra, these carrier files will also provide you with the ability to tether to your heart’s content.

Before we begin with the fun, we have to enable the ability for iTunes to upload custom carrier configurations (IPCC files) to your iPhone.  To do this, you need to make a quick preference change.  This has only be tested at this stage for iTunes 8.2.

Mac OS X Users

Paste or type the following into Terminal, and then restart iTunes:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE

Windows Users

Paste these into the ‘Run’ dialogue (Press Windows Key + R while on the desktop) and restart iTunes:

32 Bit

"C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe" /setPrefInt carrier-testing 1

64 Bit

"C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunes.exe" /setPrefInt carrier-testing 1

Getting the Goods

Now that we have made iTunes ready to accept our sweet sweet package inside of it, we need to download the appropriate IPCC for our carrier.  All are 3.0 compliant – that is, they’re based on the official bundles released from 3.0, not the earlier bundles for the 3.0 betas. All include tethering support and the Multiple MMS fix, as well as the proper MMS UAProf settings, supporting images up to 1024×1024 if supported by your carrier.

ZIP Archive containing ALL carrier’s IPCCs

A few notes regarding these IPCCs:

• Optus: Uses ‘yesinternet’ APN for data+tethering instead of ‘connect’
• Telstra: Data+tethering uses telstra.iph APN
• Three: Also includes custom ‘3′ carrier logo

Installing the custom IPCC

To apply the carrier bundle to your iPhone, plug it into your computer, and go to the summary tab of your iPhone in iTunes. Option-Click ‘Check for Update’ (Shift-Click if you’re on Windows) and browse to the Telstra_au.ipcc file you downloaded above.

After that’s done, reboot your iPhone to ensure the settings have taken effect.
If you’d like to check to make sure that they have been applied, on your iPhone browse to Settings > General > About, and check the carrier. It should have a version of 4.5.

Note for Virgin and Optus users

As Virgin and Optus use the same SIM cards, you can only apply one bundle of settings; you cannot apply both, and the most recent bundle will be the settings used. Therefore if you swap your Optus SIM with a Virgin SIM (or vice-versa), you’ll have to apply the appropriate bundle.

For the other carriers, you should be able to update the settings on your iPhone without any awry side effects even if it’s not the carrier you usually use.

Further Reading

You can find more on my blog at iPhone Carrier Bundles Update.

Article written by Beau Giles