while i am trying to switch on personal hotspot on my iphone 3gs, i am getting this error "to enable personal hotspot on this account, contact carrier"

Bingo.....a perfect solution to getting personal hotspot. But frankly APPLE should not put people through so much confusion and anguish for something as simple as this and something that one got by default in IPhone 4s!!!

Ok. And what happened when you contacted your carrier to have your account enabled for Personal Hotspot?

You are receiving this error because the carrier has to support Personal Hotspot and provision your account for it. So, check with your carrier and see if they support Personal Hotspot and if they do what do you have to do to qualify for it. Most carriers charge an extra fee for Personal Hotspot.

What part of that message is confusing to you? Your account is not provisioned to support that feature. Contact your carrier. Some carriers charge extra for a plan that allows tethering. If you're using an unsupported carrier, you may not be able to use the personal hotspot feature even if you pay your carrier for a tethering plan. The feature on the phone has to be enabled by your carrier.

Look at this list:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1937

Is your carrier on it?

Look at the last column, is there a check under "Carrier Offers Personal Hotspot"?

If the answer to either question is "no" then there's nothing you can do other than to switch to a supported carrier that offers that feature.

I Had the same issue. This helped:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1PF8dC-Ikc0

i was facing the same issue, this one solved it. thanks..https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1PF8dC-Ikc0