Around the release of iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS, rumors started to fly concerning MMS and tethering, both of which would get 3.0 support. The word was AT&T was unnecessarily delaying MMS, maybe as far as September, and that tethering would run AT&T customers as much as $55/month.

According to AT&T, none of this is true. They recently sent an email to Wired.com to set the record straight. A spokesman for the company has confirmed charges for tethering (booooo!) though he wasn’t willing to mention specific numbers or a live date for the service. As they’ve stated before, the email maintains MMS for “later this summer.”

By the by, the first day of autumn isn’t until September 22, giving plenty of room for “later this summer” and “September” to mean the same thing. As for tethering, we’re probably looking at a $15 upcharge, which is consistent with other tethering/data plans. Seems egregious on top of an unlimited data plan, but I don’t have much use for tethering. My apologies to those of you that do.

We already posted a how-to for enabling tethering on your shiny new OS 3.0. While awesome, it is clunky, slow, requires a mac… yada, yada, yada.

Leave it to iClarified to give us a handy and simple way to enable tethering right from the phone. All you have to do is use Safari from the phone and navigate to a specific website. Click a link here, say yes there, and next thing you know, tethering is enabled on your iPhone.

I know someone, who knows someone, who did it (wink, wink) and it was as easy as pie. Click through and try it for yourself. Let’s just say I know it works.

Most of the bad news coming with the iPhone OS 3.0 release is from AT&T, the iPhone’s sole US carrier. Despite most every other iPhone carrier in the world enabling tethering and MMS today, AT&T did not, much to her users’ chagrin.

The software is there, though, and it’s taken less than a day for someone to figure out a hack (for tethering that is – MMS has been around since the first jailbreak). The guys at MacMegasite have a quick and dirty tutorial to get the thing running. In short, all it requires is that you download a carrier settings file and perform a defaults write command in a Mac terminal. Restore your phone while holding option down and you can add the carrier settings update without messing with the rest of your phone. Head to “Network” under your general settings and you should see tethering, with options for USB and Bluetooth functionality.

Early reports suggest things are a little slow, and I have yet to read of a successful PC mod for this. Still, good work from everyone involved with this (seems like MacMegasite, Gizmodo, and AppleNova for some quick credits). Have you tried this yet? Did it work for you?

Full tutorial here.