If the built-in tether function is Disabled, then use a tether app. You will use TOR whether you're on hotspot or tether to bypass blocking.
Here's the solution:
When I use the phones Wifi hotspot I am running TOR on my laptop.
Use TOR to proxy all http traffic through the TOR proxies. You can run TOR (called Orbot) on your droid (and use the transparent tether proxy option but it seems to run slowly and just not work). In my experience, it's better to run TOR on your laptop rather than on the phone.
After installing the TOR browser bundle [
https://www.torproject.org/ ], set your PC's system wide proxy option (this is under Control Panel, Internet Options, Connection, LAN Settings, Proxy Server in XP). Select Use Proxy Server For Your LAN. Click Advanced and for HTTP, enter 127.0.0.1 for the proxy server and port 8118. Or use the tor browser (which is a rebranded Firefox). Sometimes secure https websites are not blocked (bank websites etc...) but if they are blocked, enter the same Proxy Address and Port number for
Secure. There's many guides for setting up other browsers to work with TOR. They also have TOR plugins for many browsers, one is called proxyswitch.
Also I have noticed that regular TCP connections work, such as using Ping, traceroute, emule, utorrent. Apparently they are using deep packet inspection and not just blocking traffic based on the port number, as connections to web servers running on ports other than 80 also fail when not on TOR.
It is reliable but it can be slow. To speed it up, you can edit the tor config file to only use exit nodes in a certain country (eg the USA) or only use certain exit nodes that are fast. The tor GUI has a list of the fastest nodes.
To make it easier, you can simply click "use a new identity" when you're on a slow node.
You can also use a commercial VPN service or setup your own VPN server from your house. Or even easier, but untested, is to setup your own http proxy. For a commercial vpn, search the app store for VPN, you'll find many providers. One example is hotspot shield.
To setup a vpn from your home connection, look on YouTube for openvpn. This requires some Networking knowledge and a roll up your sleeves attitude.