iPhone Configuration Utility: how to override tethering APN
My carrier, Swisscom, offers a product called "Corporate Application Access" (CAA) which essentially allows you to use a different GPRS APN (corporate.swisscom.ch instead of gprs.swisscom.ch), assigning you a public IP address (instead of a private NATed one). I need this for a specific kind of VPN.
Using iPhone Configuration Utility I was able to change the APN to corporate.swisscom.ch, and indeed I see the iPhone surfing the Internet using the public IP. I can even ping the iPhone from outside while on 3G, never saw that before :-). Also, my VPN works.
Unfortunately, when I enable tethering using the Personal Hotspot feature, the iPhone falls back to the default APN gprs.swisscom.ch, and still gets a private IP. As you may have guessed, my VPN doesn't work. I have already tried resetting network settings, and even tried a different iPhone (a 3GS instead of a 4, but both running iOS 4.3.3).
For some reason I think Apple may have blocked overriding the tethering APN, in order to avoid users living in countries where tethering is a paid add-on to overcome the limitation by changing the tethering APN to the regular data APN.
While I understand these reasons, I still need to have my Personal Hotspot work using the correct corporate.swisscom.ch APN. Otherwise I'd have to purchase a separate data card with a separate subscription just to access the VPN from my laptop, which doesn't make much sense.
Has anyone ever had this problem, and even better, solved it?
Thank you :-)
iPhone 4, iOS 4.3.2