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When I travel to Europe, I buy a SIM, stick it in a Moto-E that has a European radio, then tether my regular cell phone. This has been an effective solution since I'm using my regular phone, and I have all my apps.

But, last time I traveled, I got a LycaMobile (Denmark) SIM, but they blocked tethering. The data connection worked fine from apps on the European phone. The wifi hotspot could be set-up on the European phone. My US cell phone successfully connected to the European phone's wifi hotspot. But as we all know, unless there is Internet connectivity, having a successful wifi connection is useless. I went to two LycaMobile outlets and they confirmed that tethering is blocked for the plan I bought.

My question: would a user-space application (like PdaNet+) allow me to connect my US cell phone via wifi and allow me to access the Internet even though the normal Android tethering was blocked by the carrier?

(Moto-E, Android 4.4.2 (API 19))

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First I would recommend using a VPN service to prevent your ISP from inferring your avoidance of the ban by sniffing your internet traffic. It would be best to pay for one, as free VPN services collect and sell your personality data. More about how your ISP can tell if you are tethering.

You will have two classes of options: rooted or non-root.

Non-root

  • Like @Dale suggested above, PDA.net (Also known as the companion app foxfi which still works on legacy devices) is a good choice. But that requires an app to be installed on your other device before you can use it.
  • If you don't want to use PDA.net, you can try changing your phone to not report to your ISP that you are using teather. You only have to perform the following steps once. This is known as the "Dun = 0" option. First Sideload ADB and Fastboot via xdaDevelopers. Next enable USB Debugging on your phone/tablet. After connecting your phone to your computer via USB cable, run adb shell in a command prompt. Type settings put global tether_dun_required 0 and press enter. Now whenever you enable tethering on your phone it won't report to your ISP that you are using it. However they still will be able to infer you are tethering via inspecting your network traffic.

Rooted

FYI

  • Since you are messing around with teathering options, you might be intersted in knowing about reverse teathering. There is a free open source project called (gnirehtet) will allow you to do all kinds of sharing of your internet traffic to your android phone using a Mac, Linux or Windows computer. The minimum version of android is 5.0 (Lollipop)

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June Fabrics PDA Software Support responded:

You can try this and see if it works:
1. Install PdaNet 5.1 on both your Moto E and Moto X
2. On the Moto E open PdaNet and activate "WiFi Direct Hotspot"
3. On the Moto X open PdaNet and tap "Connect to a PdaNet Hotspot", 

See if the two can establish connection.

This suggests that this software, if added to both phones, would allow the tethering that I would like.

Further investigation suggests that there is a cat and mouse game going on between carriers that attempt to block tethering and apps that are designed to get around these blocks. Originally there was an app called "FoxFi" that used wifi mode. Later Android versions (after 4.0 and on) have been selectively removing the ability of wifi mode. But there are two other modes: bluetooth mode and usb mode that are available in the more recent app called "PDANet".

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