*WARNING* 3G service

[lowlife]

What is the *WARNING* in all capital letters supposed to mean?

Lol. It means do not get the 250mb plan.

 

[ipadgypsy]

I thought the warning meant be sure
YOu have 3G in your Area....I could not sign up without using a credit card that had a zip code that was 3G enabled. How ridiculous! I am in va and had to use my daughter's credit card in Michigan to get the data plan - I also spent Torturous hours this weekend with AppleCare and ATT before a tech figured this out!
As you can imagine - I am elevating my complaint as high as I am able. It boggles my mind that it didn't occur to ATT to have a work around for this!

Ipadgypsy

 

[cherhall]

You CAN sign up for service without having 3G in your area. I activated two ipads Friday morning with no problem. I used my own address and I live at least an hour from the nearest 3G coverage. Actually I'm just barely in their Edge coverage! I've used it constantly since Friday, up to 550 Meg used already.

 

[USBill]

No streaming video....although some streaming pandora.

You have your answer. We did a QOS on our network, and Pandora was eating up a ton of bandwidth. Between that and YouTube we figured we could drop one of our T1s, if we blocked both.

 

[rowan]

Is there a way to measure usage without being on a data plan?

 

[Nel727]

Terry White on his blog has a suggestion for people who have the 3G but plan to use it mostly in wifi mode and only use the 3G as needed and want to see if the 250 plan works for you: put the iPad in airplane mode then turn on the wifi. This keeps the iPad from occasionally connecting with 3G even in a hot spot and running up your data use.

 

[CPMS]

Terry White on his blog has a suggestion for people who have the 3G but plan to use it mostly in wifi mode and only use the 3G as needed and want to see if the 250 plan works for you: put the iPad in airplane mode then turn on the wifi. This keeps the iPad from occasionally connecting with 3G even in a hot spot and running up your data use.

This is a great suggestion. I'm going to use it and see if the $15 plan will suffice for my 32G 3G. I'm not one who will be carrying this with me everywhere I go and I do have a mobile hotspot that I can take along if I know I'll need cell coverage (say a meeting in a client's office).

 

[lobywan]

Overall, the $29.95 is pretty cheap for unlimited data I think; the international plans are killer expensive, however....

 

[gentlefury]

Overall, the $29.95 is pretty cheap for unlimited data I think; the international plans are killer expensive, however....

If it were actually unlimited....cell phone companies have a very skewed definition of the word.

 

[cherhall]

Most plans do have that 5 gig softcap, such as the iPhone plan. But AT&T has specifically stated several times when asked, that the iPad plan is truly unlimited, with no warnings from them for using "too much".

 

[gentlefury]

Most plans do have that 5 gig softcap, such as the iPhone plan. But AT&T has specifically stated several times when asked, that the iPad plan is truly unlimited, with no warnings from them for using "too much".

Is that why it's so slow then? They traded a per month cap for a per second?

 

[cherhall]

Not sure how to post a link but knowyourcell.com has an article about testing the unlimited claim and has supposedly used over 30 gig without issue.

 

[cherhall]

I'd be happy to find out how "slow" the 3G is. I'm on Edge!

 

[Edlex]

Terry White on his blog has a suggestion for people who have the 3G but plan to use it mostly in wifi mode and only use the 3G as needed and want to see if the 250 plan works for you: put the iPad in airplane mode then turn on the wifi. This keeps the iPad from occasionally connecting with 3G even in a hot spot and running up your data use.

Just turn off the data in settings. You don't need to put it in airplane mode.

 

[lowlife]

The plan is unlimited because AT&T must have tested an iPad and realized the huge data usage.

@Rowan I don't think there is a way to test data without signing up.