It's pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious - Kin Hubbard
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AT&T announces Ipad roaming charges
US MOBILE OPERATOR AT&T has announced its Ipad data roaming tariffs.
The data prices will see fanbois, who shelled out $130 over and above the Ipad's already excessive pricing, pay at least $1 per megabyte if they outlay $200 for 30 days of data roaming. That figure increases slightly if punters opt for lower capacity packages. To compound matters, AT&T heaps that charge on top of asking for $30 every month for access to "unlimited" data on the Ipad.
While mobile operators gouging their customers with roaming charges is hardly new or exclusive to AT&T, given that the Ipad is being touted as a carry-everywhere device, one has to wonder how many fanbois can afford to pay at least $50 per month after splashing out $130 for a 3G radio.
Given that 'features' such as Iad are set to consume formidable amounts of bandwidth to display 'takeover' adverts, it shouldn't be too hard to surpass the measly bandwidth quotas AT&T is offering.
But of course Jobs' Mob doesn't care, after all the firm has a cosy agreement with AT&T to take a nice cut of the revenue its device generates for the mobile operator.
Whether users can disable Iad and other resource hogs when roaming is unclear at this point. Given that it is looking likely to represent a significant income generator, it's unlikely that Apple will want to sacrifice such a revenue stream, even though that will come at considerable financial expense of its flock of the faithful.
This foretells bad news for British Ipad buyers, who will learn how much of their hard earned cash will be parted from them by Jobs' Mob and its mobile operator cronies very soon.
Given that Jobs' Mob has managed to hook a million Ipad punters in the US alone, don't expect the operators to offer a fair deal as they look to cash in on fanbois blinded by the reflections on the Ipad's glossy screen. µ
Tags: Apple
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I Don´t want pay large cost for Roaming.
dou you know? www.padinthecity.com
They have the service of Rental Ipad with Unlimited and Fully internet access and Madrid Apps. (cheap, no extra fees, no roaming, low cost).
Buy a normal sized SIM and trim it to fit. People are already showing video of it using TMobile SIMs cut to size in the USA. 3FF SIMs have the same electrical contacts and follow the same standards as normal SIMs, just they have less unused space around the chip.
Also don't be surprised if 3FF sized SIMs start to become available for other devices and phones. Jobs didn't pull the form factor out of thin air, it's a standard that was developed by the ETSI
...where can one buy a pre-pay Micro SIM for an iPad?
Given that TMobile will charge you a mere £7.50 ($11.50) per megabyte on a pre-pay SIM to roam in the USA (and most of the rest of the world) I wouldn't try holding them up as a shining example.
My original point holds true: as the Pad is contract free and unlocked then you're better off buying a local pre-pay SIM and using that.
Not all data roaming is this extortionate - at least not in Europe. Recently on holiday and needed to use my android phone a lot to get updates on volcanos etc! Needed to buy a couple of 20MB european roaming data bundles from Tmobile at £5 (~$7.50) each - in retrospect I should have bought a single 50MB bundle at £10. Not "cheap" but not extortianate compared to the ATT rates ... but then again, I buy 6 months of "unlimited" (ok ~1GB/month fair usage limit) internet access for my phone for only £20 (thats £20/$30 for the entire 6 months and not per month!).
your service provider is, they charge you an arm and a leg for data roaming. The iPhone allows you to disable data roaming. I've no doubt that the iPad will also allow it. The iPad is however unlocked. You can pick up a SIM from a local provider and get your data from them direct at local rates.