11 ms·

It should be noted that the limited data plans for both AT&T and Verizon mean that at the max 4G speed of 73 Mbps, you could use all your bandwidth for the enti

It should be noted that the limited data plans for both AT&T and Verizon mean that at the max 4G speed of 73 Mbps, you could use all your bandwidth for the entire month in less than three and a half minutes (2 GB plan). The overages of $10/GB per month on both services mean once you go over your plan, you'll be looking at a little over $5/minute in new charges. It is possible (though highly unlikely) to rack up over $200K/month in bandwidth charges if you managed to find an empty 4G cell for a month. Sadly Sprint, which has unlimited 4G last i checked, was absent from the release of the new iPad.

kacy 15y ago
Well, you could legitimately use 2GB by simply purchasing a movie that they discussed in the presentation. A 720p version of "Drive" on iTunes is 3.17GB. Soon it will be upgraded to 1080p, which would be at /least/ 5GB. That's at least $50 in data for one movie, assuming the data plans stay the same.
- samstave 15y ago
  Someone needs to do exactly this, then sue the balls off these carriers for such draconian plans and rates.
  - tedunangst 15y ago
    Suing the balls off of someone requires that you have "cause".
    - jrockway 15y ago
      The government allows Verizon and AT&T to use the wireless spectrum with many caveats. One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers. Hence, cause for a lawsuit is established.
      - mburns 15y ago
        "One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers." You can't objectively define what constitutes "royally fuck[ing]" their customers. Just saying "this cost more than I think is reasonable as a wireless customer" means absolutely nothing in court.
        deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - beedogs 15y ago
        > One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. Clearly you do not live in America. We abandoned the concept of consumer protection decades ago.
      - batista 15y ago
        > The government allows Verizon and AT&T to use the wireless spectrum with many caveats. One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers. Hence, cause for a lawsuit is established. We have a saying in my country, when a child exhibits some great talent, that we also use ironically when a child does or says something very dumb. "How can you not send this kid to college?" I think one of the two intentions applies perfectly to the quoted comment.
    - incongruity 15y ago
      Indeed – but it might well go far in the court of public opinion... that's gotta count for something...
    - noonespecial 15y ago
      You need a cause to get to trial and then even more so to win. You don't need one to file the suit, get the attention, and cost them big time to address it. In America you can sue anyone at any time for anything. You don't have to win to win.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
    Go for it!
- AntiRush 15y ago
  Apple doesn't let you download anything (apps, movies) bigger than 50mb over a cellular connection.
  - dagw 15y ago
    But once you go to 4G, that limitation just doesn't make sense any more. I know several people for whom 4G is the fastest internet connection available to them. Sure you could hack around it by setting up a wifi hotspot on a different 4G device, but still forcing them to use a slower network for larger downloads seems kind of dumb.
    - bunderbunder 15y ago
      Heck, for me 3G is the fastest data available to me. However, 3G (and 4G) are much more expensive, in terms of the price it costs to transmit a given quantity of data. And compared to glass and copper, the total number of bits available within a given geographic area at any given moment is a fraction as large. Unfortunately, cellular companies failed to realize that offering "unlimited" data plans would set up poor expectations. They (apparently) didn't anticipate seeing a significant percentage of their customers try to use the cellular networks for transferring large quantities of data, and thought that for most people "unlimited" would just be a marketing-friendly euphemism for "a couple hundred megabytes." In turn, people who assumed that "unlimited" really means unlimited, and assumed that the prices that were originally offered for "unlimited" were realistic prices for high volumes of cellular network usage, now seem to think that the prices that cellular network providers want to charge for data usage are rapacious. On the contrary, it's not that the price they're trying to charge now is disastrously high; it's that the price that they used to be charging was disastrously low. There's also a serious resource contention issue on cellular data. The towers can only be placed so close together before they start interfering with each other, and the bandwidth that's being advertised is the bandwidth you'll get if you've got the tower to yourself. Chicago's an illustrative story: A company came along offering household internet service through a 4G network, promising impressive bandwidth numbers. And they delivered on them for the few months between when they first opened for business and when they started getting serious traction in the market. Since then, they've earned a reputation as a pretty crappy ISP, simply because the technology itself couldn't deliver quality service to that many users at once. A wireless network cell is effectively a hub, and like on any hub resource contention can be a serious issue. Which, I suspect, is ultimately why Apple goes along with the file size caps for cellular network transfers: From a user experience perspective, they would much rather allow everyone to transfer small files at high speeds, than let everyone's user experience suffer because the network is being choked by large file transfers.
ronnier 15y ago
Right. These two companies have somewhat destroyed mobile innovation by being the largest providers of mobile internet and neutering their services to be almost useless outside of checking email and web browsing. Comcast is doing their bit with their monthly limits also. I say this with an "unlimited" AT&T plan where I've reached my monthly limit. Hitting my limit slows my connection down to a crawl (it's almost unusable, the connection says edge).
- gbog 15y ago
  The largest In The USA. Maybe you are aware that other countries do actually exist?
  - beedogs 15y ago
    Since when?
twiceaday 15y ago
The is a rumor that big telcos are going to offer companies to pay for their users bandwidth. I hope this never happens. That is not how you fix this issue.
- tomkinstinch 15y ago
  While bandwidth does have physical limits, we can all agree the prices currently being charged are excessive. The proper way to fix this is to have very local cells (or wifi). I would like to see cell networks pay individuals to connect mini cells to their home connections, and then allow any phone to connect to the cells. Wireless users get connectivity everywhere, mini cell operators have financial incentive to exist, and carriers reduce demand on their macro-scale network. If the telcos could agree on reasonably low prices (cost plus?), I would even agree to usage-based billing. The wireless carriers would become dumb pipes (as they really are to begin with). Their new role would be to coordinate distribution of mini cells. This system also creates incentive for wire line ISPs to increase their transfer rates to customers, and perhaps get into the mini cell game themselves.
cjensen 15y ago
The iPad does not have overage charges. If you use up your data, you have to manually sign up for more data. If you sign up for more, it's like starting the month over from the time you sign up. You're also given the opportunity to switch to a plan with a different data size.
- trotsky 15y ago
  you can put anyone's sim in this one
talmand 15y ago
That's what I think every time I see a 4G ad, "awesome! I can reach my data cap that much faster!"
samstave 15y ago
This is exactly what happened to me after I bought a MyTouch 4G which allowed wifi hotspotting for my laptop. While I was not charged overage fees, my data rate was crippled to 57Kbps. The thing sits in the drawer and I NEVER use it because its useless. I am paying $100 a month for it. They want $400!!! to cancel it. Fuck these carriers.
- cwe 15y ago
  If you have more than 4 months left on your contract, it will be cheaper to cancel it now.
  - rdl 15y ago
    You can often get them to not charge the early termination fee either by either being really deserving-seeming, or being a belligerent asshole (but you have to be consistent). At least with t-mo and sprint, never tried with ATT or VZ.
    - leif 15y ago
      I've also heard of people getting other carriers to buy them out of their existing contract. No idea how to approach this though.
    - gibybo 15y ago
      If you have free roaming, one strategy might be to connect to another carrier's tower and make long/consistent calls on it, forcing your provider to pay them more than the $100/mo that you are paying your provider. If you don't have free roaming, a similar strategy might work with unlimited minutes on their own network if you just use enough of them that their costs are too high to support you. If you don't have unlimited minutes, you can probably upgrade your plan, use a ton, then if they try to force you to switch or pay overages, you will likely also have the option to walk away from the contract without a fee.
      - LokiSnake 15y ago
jiggy2011 15y ago
I wonder if the next step for Apple is to use their cash reserves to buy a carrier then of course all of their devices will be restricted to it.
- k-mcgrady 15y ago
  Not really possible. If they were going to restrict their devices to their own carrier they would need a presence in most countries in the world. For Apple to buy a big carrier in every country they operate would be costly and stupid (it would be difficult to manage carriers all over the world when they just want to produce hardware and software).
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    Not in one fell swoop. They could get a carrier in the US to begin with while competing with other carriers. Once they had a critial mass they could release some new device and restrict initially just that one to their network.
  - rdl 15y ago
    They could MVNO (basically being a carrier reseller, buying bulk bandwidth from the actual network operator.) This is how Virgin Mobile, I think Boost, and some other networks have operated. Then reinforce with their own networks in places they care about (i.e. SFBA and NYC). I don't think it makes sense, but I'm sure they've evaluated it. As a customer, having Apple as my single point of contact for everything mobile would be amazing, even if I had to pay a premium. Still wouldn't get around the limitations on spectrum and towers, though, but given that Apple's cash on hand is probably 15x Sprint's market capitalization, ...
guyzero 15y ago
Let's not be silly. Existing LTE phones on Verizon get a real-world top performance in the 20Mbps range. Now, that's great and all, but no one will ever get even 50% of what's basically the signaling rate of 73Mbps. Also, your download patterns are unlikely to change a lot. It'll still be email, web surfing and some youtube. LTE makes netflix possible while not on wifi, but that's about the most data-hungry thing an average user is going to do. For the most part the only thing this changes is that things like installing apps when off wifi are much faster.
- lepht 15y ago
  Sooo... 25 minutes of watching Netflix then?
  - mirkules 15y ago
    Netflix doesn't let you connect over a data connection, IIRC. Well, unless you're tethering, but then you're killing your tethering device's data usage...
    - dangrossman 15y ago
      It definitely does. I watched Netflix on my phone for hours during a power outage.
- lukeschlather 15y ago
  Also, 4G is too unreliable, at least on my Verizon Samsung Stratosphere. It works great in some locations, but when I'm in transit (the main times I could risk running up a tab) it drops out pretty regularly.
- msh 15y ago
  I am not in the US but with my MiFi cabled to a computer I get around 40-60 mbit (a bit less when using wifi to share the connection).
donniezazen 15y ago
I get 5-6 Mbps on Sprint. I don't think most people even on Verizon get 73Mbps.
bhousel 15y ago
>Sadly Sprint, which has unlimited 4G last i checked, was absent from the release of the new iPad. I think Sprint is excluded because their 4G service is based on WiWax for now, although they are switching to LTE later this year and continuing into 2013.
tybris 15y ago
Apple should really use their vast piles of cash to buy one of the major carriers.
- tomflack 15y ago
  It's a nice dream, but would it actually make sense? Spend a lot of money to get an expensive capital-intensive business that is very different to any other business units in Apple and operates in only one of the countries Apple has a market presence.
- gurkendoktor 15y ago
  Google and Amazon are the companies that aim for the US first every single time. At least it would be unusual if Apple did the same here.
mark_l_watson 15y ago
Don't most people, really, use iPads over wifi? Or am I just one of the cheapskates who bought one without 3G or 4G support? I bought an iPad 2 last year and I didn't even consider buying one with a data plan. I am near wifi about 99% of the time, discounting driving, hiking, and airplane time. In a pinch, I can check email on my Droid. Eventually 4G will become inexpensive, but it isn't right now.
- rjurney 15y ago
  I rely on the 'always on' internet connection that 3G provides me. When I need to look something up, I don't even think about wifi. I just look it up. There is value in that.
- rdl 15y ago
  I sometimes trust 3G (and now 4G) more than I trust the available wifi, even over a VPN. Admittedly it's not that hard to put up a fake base station, but it's basically unlikely. Sometimes wifi at events is just badly run or overloaded, too. There are also sites with rules about what's allowed to be on the network or not. Often a consultant or guest can't put his device on the network, at least without a lot of work (BYOD isn't done on many networks), but having network access is useful. There are also sometimes IP considerations (using an iPad or 4G hotspot during a break from a day job is less likely to be "using employer resources" to manage your startup if you're moonlighting than if you use their wifi...). For +$130, it's worth it to me to have the capability. It also makes GPS more accurate, and maps is a really cool thing. I only replace my iPad every second generation, though.
- waitwhat 15y ago
  I really don't want or need all my devices to have seperate data contracts -- one contract (for the phone) and hotspot capability is just fine.
- r00fus 15y ago
  I used to know someone who worked at a facility where he didn't trust the wifi (perhaps he thought they were running bluecoat or something). He just used an iPad 3G for all his personal stuff. He was pretty well regarded, so no issues on productivity/etc.
michaelbuckbee 15y ago
Inelegant, but you could get a Sprint Mobile hotspot and use it (and 4 other devices) with their 4G unlimited plan.
- mason55 15y ago
  That's like how Verizon was selling iPads with MiFi's attached via a case.
noonespecial 15y ago
While this particular example seems extra silly, it does fit the long tradition of carriers advertising amazing new features that are technically true but always hampered in some minor way as to make them functionally useless. I explain it to laypeople in one simple sentence: "You can't really watch the game on your phone."
robomartin 15y ago
If you have two or more iPads, why do they make you pay multiple monthly fixed-price amounts for connectivity? This is even more ridiculous when you consider that most devices are probably on WiFi most of the time. So, you are paying $mm per month times N devices for, well, nothing. It's time for these contracts to become more reasonable. Right now they border on being nothing more than theft. Imagine this: You pay AT&T for your DSL line and you also pay them for wireless access for your iPad. You are paying them twice but only using one of the pipes at any given time.
- mdonahoe 15y ago
  The contracts are for the devices, not you. It is possible to use them both at the same time, so ATT wants your money. I definitely agree that they should do it your way though. Pricing is part of the product, and simple-to-understand pricing schemes will sell. In the meantime, you might be able to get creative with swapping SIM cards around.
cletus 15y ago
I'm disappointed the "top" comment on this announcement is nothing more than a sideways swipe at an unrelated topic from someone who clearly has an axe to grind. In Australia, the ACCC banned the use of the word "unlimited" (with respect to Internet access, wireless or fixed-line) unless it truly was unlimited. No shaping, hard or soft quotas, excess usage charges and vague "fair use" provisions. The result? You get what you pay for and you pay for what you get. If you pay for 1TB/month on an ADSL line you're absolutely going to get it. The real problem here is a combination of false advertising and people with completely unrealistic expectations. Not everyone can use 73Mbps all the time. There simply isn't the bandwidth for it. If you want to download 100GB+/month you should absolutely be paying more than someone who only downloads 2GB/month. Back to the "new iPad" (why not iPad 3? Seriously!), i'm excited about it. Having it be able to do 1080p is great, although I think it's high time they up the flash storage at this point. 64GB doesn't go that far at Full HD. The RAM, CPU and memory upgrades make this a pretty serious device now. The release of iPhoto is probably going to be unfortunately for many photo app makers (and hopefully it'll mean an end to Photoshop Touch's ridiculous 1600x1600 limit). Apple just continues to cement their complete dominance against, well, everyone in the tablet space.
- sneak 15y ago
  "why not iPad 3? Seriously!" The video shown at the end of the announcement event has an Apple employee referring to it as "the third-generation iPad". This seems very strange to me, considering how on-message Apple has ALWAYS been in the past. It's just... sloppy. I wonder if Apple has a future beyond its current momentum. I'll be convinced otherwise ifwhen they release another world-changing product that wasn't invented by Steve.
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    What exact is sloppy? Third generation is one of their terms for it.
    - sneak 15y ago
      Apple hasn't historically had multiple names for a single product before. That's what I see as sloppy about it.
msh 15y ago
Well I have no problem with them having a 2GB plan for people with only a smaller need to surf and check email but want good speed. They do lack a plan with a decent cap, I can live without unlimited but the cap should be decent. On my non-us LTE plan they reserve the right to throttle it if I use more than 30 GB a month. I think thats a decent cap (the price is approx. 52 USD a month including 25% VAT, cheaper plans with less data is available).

kacy 15y ago

Well, you could legitimately use 2GB by simply purchasing a movie that they discussed in the presentation. A 720p version of "Drive" on iTunes is 3.17GB. Soon it will be upgraded to 1080p, which would be at /least/ 5GB. That's at least $50 in data for one movie, assuming the data plans stay the same.

samstave 15y ago
Someone needs to do exactly this, then sue the balls off these carriers for such draconian plans and rates.
- tedunangst 15y ago
  Suing the balls off of someone requires that you have "cause".
  - jrockway 15y ago
    The government allows Verizon and AT&T to use the wireless spectrum with many caveats. One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers. Hence, cause for a lawsuit is established.
    - mburns 15y ago
      "One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers." You can't objectively define what constitutes "royally fuck[ing]" their customers. Just saying "this cost more than I think is reasonable as a wireless customer" means absolutely nothing in court.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
    - beedogs 15y ago
      > One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. Clearly you do not live in America. We abandoned the concept of consumer protection decades ago.
    - batista 15y ago
      > The government allows Verizon and AT&T to use the wireless spectrum with many caveats. One caveat is that they can't royally fuck their customers. This is royally fucking their customers. Hence, cause for a lawsuit is established. We have a saying in my country, when a child exhibits some great talent, that we also use ironically when a child does or says something very dumb. "How can you not send this kid to college?" I think one of the two intentions applies perfectly to the quoted comment.
  - incongruity 15y ago
    Indeed – but it might well go far in the court of public opinion... that's gotta count for something...
  - noonespecial 15y ago
    You need a cause to get to trial and then even more so to win. You don't need one to file the suit, get the attention, and cost them big time to address it. In America you can sue anyone at any time for anything. You don't have to win to win.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
  Go for it!
AntiRush 15y ago
Apple doesn't let you download anything (apps, movies) bigger than 50mb over a cellular connection.
- dagw 15y ago
  But once you go to 4G, that limitation just doesn't make sense any more. I know several people for whom 4G is the fastest internet connection available to them. Sure you could hack around it by setting up a wifi hotspot on a different 4G device, but still forcing them to use a slower network for larger downloads seems kind of dumb.
  - bunderbunder 15y ago
    Heck, for me 3G is the fastest data available to me. However, 3G (and 4G) are much more expensive, in terms of the price it costs to transmit a given quantity of data. And compared to glass and copper, the total number of bits available within a given geographic area at any given moment is a fraction as large. Unfortunately, cellular companies failed to realize that offering "unlimited" data plans would set up poor expectations. They (apparently) didn't anticipate seeing a significant percentage of their customers try to use the cellular networks for transferring large quantities of data, and thought that for most people "unlimited" would just be a marketing-friendly euphemism for "a couple hundred megabytes." In turn, people who assumed that "unlimited" really means unlimited, and assumed that the prices that were originally offered for "unlimited" were realistic prices for high volumes of cellular network usage, now seem to think that the prices that cellular network providers want to charge for data usage are rapacious. On the contrary, it's not that the price they're trying to charge now is disastrously high; it's that the price that they used to be charging was disastrously low. There's also a serious resource contention issue on cellular data. The towers can only be placed so close together before they start interfering with each other, and the bandwidth that's being advertised is the bandwidth you'll get if you've got the tower to yourself. Chicago's an illustrative story: A company came along offering household internet service through a 4G network, promising impressive bandwidth numbers. And they delivered on them for the few months between when they first opened for business and when they started getting serious traction in the market. Since then, they've earned a reputation as a pretty crappy ISP, simply because the technology itself couldn't deliver quality service to that many users at once. A wireless network cell is effectively a hub, and like on any hub resource contention can be a serious issue. Which, I suspect, is ultimately why Apple goes along with the file size caps for cellular network transfers: From a user experience perspective, they would much rather allow everyone to transfer small files at high speeds, than let everyone's user experience suffer because the network is being choked by large file transfers.

ronnier 15y ago

Right. These two companies have somewhat destroyed mobile innovation by being the largest providers of mobile internet and neutering their services to be almost useless outside of checking email and web browsing. Comcast is doing their bit with their monthly limits also. I say this with an "unlimited" AT&T plan where I've reached my monthly limit. Hitting my limit slows my connection down to a crawl (it's almost unusable, the connection says edge).

gbog 15y ago
The largest In The USA. Maybe you are aware that other countries do actually exist?
- beedogs 15y ago
  Since when?

twiceaday 15y ago

The is a rumor that big telcos are going to offer companies to pay for their users bandwidth. I hope this never happens. That is not how you fix this issue.

tomkinstinch 15y ago
While bandwidth does have physical limits, we can all agree the prices currently being charged are excessive. The proper way to fix this is to have very local cells (or wifi). I would like to see cell networks pay individuals to connect mini cells to their home connections, and then allow any phone to connect to the cells. Wireless users get connectivity everywhere, mini cell operators have financial incentive to exist, and carriers reduce demand on their macro-scale network. If the telcos could agree on reasonably low prices (cost plus?), I would even agree to usage-based billing. The wireless carriers would become dumb pipes (as they really are to begin with). Their new role would be to coordinate distribution of mini cells. This system also creates incentive for wire line ISPs to increase their transfer rates to customers, and perhaps get into the mini cell game themselves.

cjensen 15y ago

The iPad does not have overage charges. If you use up your data, you have to manually sign up for more data. If you sign up for more, it's like starting the month over from the time you sign up. You're also given the opportunity to switch to a plan with a different data size.

trotsky 15y ago
you can put anyone's sim in this one

talmand 15y ago

That's what I think every time I see a 4G ad, "awesome! I can reach my data cap that much faster!"

samstave 15y ago

This is exactly what happened to me after I bought a MyTouch 4G which allowed wifi hotspotting for my laptop. While I was not charged overage fees, my data rate was crippled to 57Kbps. The thing sits in the drawer and I NEVER use it because its useless. I am paying $100 a month for it. They want $400!!! to cancel it. Fuck these carriers.

cwe 15y ago
If you have more than 4 months left on your contract, it will be cheaper to cancel it now.
- rdl 15y ago
  You can often get them to not charge the early termination fee either by either being really deserving-seeming, or being a belligerent asshole (but you have to be consistent). At least with t-mo and sprint, never tried with ATT or VZ.
  - leif 15y ago
    I've also heard of people getting other carriers to buy them out of their existing contract. No idea how to approach this though.
  - gibybo 15y ago
    If you have free roaming, one strategy might be to connect to another carrier's tower and make long/consistent calls on it, forcing your provider to pay them more than the $100/mo that you are paying your provider. If you don't have free roaming, a similar strategy might work with unlimited minutes on their own network if you just use enough of them that their costs are too high to support you. If you don't have unlimited minutes, you can probably upgrade your plan, use a ton, then if they try to force you to switch or pay overages, you will likely also have the option to walk away from the contract without a fee.
    - LokiSnake 15y ago

jiggy2011 15y ago

I wonder if the next step for Apple is to use their cash reserves to buy a carrier then of course all of their devices will be restricted to it.

k-mcgrady 15y ago
Not really possible. If they were going to restrict their devices to their own carrier they would need a presence in most countries in the world. For Apple to buy a big carrier in every country they operate would be costly and stupid (it would be difficult to manage carriers all over the world when they just want to produce hardware and software).
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  Not in one fell swoop. They could get a carrier in the US to begin with while competing with other carriers. Once they had a critial mass they could release some new device and restrict initially just that one to their network.
- rdl 15y ago
  They could MVNO (basically being a carrier reseller, buying bulk bandwidth from the actual network operator.) This is how Virgin Mobile, I think Boost, and some other networks have operated. Then reinforce with their own networks in places they care about (i.e. SFBA and NYC). I don't think it makes sense, but I'm sure they've evaluated it. As a customer, having Apple as my single point of contact for everything mobile would be amazing, even if I had to pay a premium. Still wouldn't get around the limitations on spectrum and towers, though, but given that Apple's cash on hand is probably 15x Sprint's market capitalization, ...

guyzero 15y ago

Let's not be silly. Existing LTE phones on Verizon get a real-world top performance in the 20Mbps range. Now, that's great and all, but no one will ever get even 50% of what's basically the signaling rate of 73Mbps. Also, your download patterns are unlikely to change a lot. It'll still be email, web surfing and some youtube. LTE makes netflix possible while not on wifi, but that's about the most data-hungry thing an average user is going to do. For the most part the only thing this changes is that things like installing apps when off wifi are much faster.

lepht 15y ago
Sooo... 25 minutes of watching Netflix then?
- mirkules 15y ago
  Netflix doesn't let you connect over a data connection, IIRC. Well, unless you're tethering, but then you're killing your tethering device's data usage...
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    It definitely does. I watched Netflix on my phone for hours during a power outage.
lukeschlather 15y ago
Also, 4G is too unreliable, at least on my Verizon Samsung Stratosphere. It works great in some locations, but when I'm in transit (the main times I could risk running up a tab) it drops out pretty regularly.
msh 15y ago
I am not in the US but with my MiFi cabled to a computer I get around 40-60 mbit (a bit less when using wifi to share the connection).

donniezazen 15y ago

I get 5-6 Mbps on Sprint. I don't think most people even on Verizon get 73Mbps.

bhousel 15y ago

>Sadly Sprint, which has unlimited 4G last i checked, was absent from the release of the new iPad. I think Sprint is excluded because their 4G service is based on WiWax for now, although they are switching to LTE later this year and continuing into 2013.

tybris 15y ago

Apple should really use their vast piles of cash to buy one of the major carriers.

tomflack 15y ago
It's a nice dream, but would it actually make sense? Spend a lot of money to get an expensive capital-intensive business that is very different to any other business units in Apple and operates in only one of the countries Apple has a market presence.
gurkendoktor 15y ago
Google and Amazon are the companies that aim for the US first every single time. At least it would be unusual if Apple did the same here.

mark_l_watson 15y ago

Don't most people, really, use iPads over wifi? Or am I just one of the cheapskates who bought one without 3G or 4G support? I bought an iPad 2 last year and I didn't even consider buying one with a data plan. I am near wifi about 99% of the time, discounting driving, hiking, and airplane time. In a pinch, I can check email on my Droid. Eventually 4G will become inexpensive, but it isn't right now.

rjurney 15y ago
I rely on the 'always on' internet connection that 3G provides me. When I need to look something up, I don't even think about wifi. I just look it up. There is value in that.
rdl 15y ago
I sometimes trust 3G (and now 4G) more than I trust the available wifi, even over a VPN. Admittedly it's not that hard to put up a fake base station, but it's basically unlikely. Sometimes wifi at events is just badly run or overloaded, too. There are also sites with rules about what's allowed to be on the network or not. Often a consultant or guest can't put his device on the network, at least without a lot of work (BYOD isn't done on many networks), but having network access is useful. There are also sometimes IP considerations (using an iPad or 4G hotspot during a break from a day job is less likely to be "using employer resources" to manage your startup if you're moonlighting than if you use their wifi...). For +$130, it's worth it to me to have the capability. It also makes GPS more accurate, and maps is a really cool thing. I only replace my iPad every second generation, though.
waitwhat 15y ago
I really don't want or need all my devices to have seperate data contracts -- one contract (for the phone) and hotspot capability is just fine.
r00fus 15y ago
I used to know someone who worked at a facility where he didn't trust the wifi (perhaps he thought they were running bluecoat or something). He just used an iPad 3G for all his personal stuff. He was pretty well regarded, so no issues on productivity/etc.

michaelbuckbee 15y ago

Inelegant, but you could get a Sprint Mobile hotspot and use it (and 4 other devices) with their 4G unlimited plan.

mason55 15y ago
That's like how Verizon was selling iPads with MiFi's attached via a case.

noonespecial 15y ago

While this particular example seems extra silly, it does fit the long tradition of carriers advertising amazing new features that are technically true but always hampered in some minor way as to make them functionally useless. I explain it to laypeople in one simple sentence: "You can't really watch the game on your phone."

robomartin 15y ago

If you have two or more iPads, why do they make you pay multiple monthly fixed-price amounts for connectivity? This is even more ridiculous when you consider that most devices are probably on WiFi most of the time. So, you are paying $mm per month times N devices for, well, nothing. It's time for these contracts to become more reasonable. Right now they border on being nothing more than theft. Imagine this: You pay AT&T for your DSL line and you also pay them for wireless access for your iPad. You are paying them twice but only using one of the pipes at any given time.

mdonahoe 15y ago
The contracts are for the devices, not you. It is possible to use them both at the same time, so ATT wants your money. I definitely agree that they should do it your way though. Pricing is part of the product, and simple-to-understand pricing schemes will sell. In the meantime, you might be able to get creative with swapping SIM cards around.

cletus 15y ago

I'm disappointed the "top" comment on this announcement is nothing more than a sideways swipe at an unrelated topic from someone who clearly has an axe to grind. In Australia, the ACCC banned the use of the word "unlimited" (with respect to Internet access, wireless or fixed-line) unless it truly was unlimited. No shaping, hard or soft quotas, excess usage charges and vague "fair use" provisions. The result? You get what you pay for and you pay for what you get. If you pay for 1TB/month on an ADSL line you're absolutely going to get it. The real problem here is a combination of false advertising and people with completely unrealistic expectations. Not everyone can use 73Mbps all the time. There simply isn't the bandwidth for it. If you want to download 100GB+/month you should absolutely be paying more than someone who only downloads 2GB/month. Back to the "new iPad" (why not iPad 3? Seriously!), i'm excited about it. Having it be able to do 1080p is great, although I think it's high time they up the flash storage at this point. 64GB doesn't go that far at Full HD. The RAM, CPU and memory upgrades make this a pretty serious device now. The release of iPhoto is probably going to be unfortunately for many photo app makers (and hopefully it'll mean an end to Photoshop Touch's ridiculous 1600x1600 limit). Apple just continues to cement their complete dominance against, well, everyone in the tablet space.

sneak 15y ago
"why not iPad 3? Seriously!" The video shown at the end of the announcement event has an Apple employee referring to it as "the third-generation iPad". This seems very strange to me, considering how on-message Apple has ALWAYS been in the past. It's just... sloppy. I wonder if Apple has a future beyond its current momentum. I'll be convinced otherwise ifwhen they release another world-changing product that wasn't invented by Steve.
- rbarooah 15y ago
  What exact is sloppy? Third generation is one of their terms for it.
  - sneak 15y ago
    Apple hasn't historically had multiple names for a single product before. That's what I see as sloppy about it.

msh 15y ago

Well I have no problem with them having a 2GB plan for people with only a smaller need to surf and check email but want good speed. They do lack a plan with a decent cap, I can live without unlimited but the cap should be decent. On my non-us LTE plan they reserve the right to throttle it if I use more than 30 GB a month. I think thats a decent cap (the price is approx. 52 USD a month including 25% VAT, cheaper plans with less data is available).