Can my phone act as a WiFi access point without mobile data? I have an old (Galaxy S1-class) phone running a custom ICS ROM.  It has a pay-as-you-go mobile SIM without data.

I also have a bunch of kids with iPads that want to play Minecraft together.  As far as I can tell, I can't get the iPad to make an ad-hoc wifi network on its own.  If I had mobile data, I could turn on the Mobile Hotspot feature, connect all the iPads to the phone.  I think if I did this now, though, my SIM would be charged for any stray Internet requests that are accidentally made.

Is there a simple way to do this?
'adb shell setprop SimCheck.disable 1'


This will disable sim check while turning on WiFi tethering.