My 3G adventures with the iPad

My iPad has quickly become my constant companion, but I rely on Wi-Fi networks at home, at the office, at relatives’ and friends’ homes, and at hotels to stay connected for email, Web browsing, and all the rest. Given all the issues reported with AT&T’s 3G network, I was glad I wasn’t required to sign up for a monthly plan when I got the 3G-capable iPad model. But over the last three months I’ve had an usual amount of out-of-the-office travel, often in places with no accessible Wi-Fi networks or, at many hotels and airport lounges, where the per-day price was so exorbitant that I wouldn’t pay. (Wi-Fi for travelers remains a very mixed bag, given the fractured providers and high costs in many traveler locations.)

I put my misgivings aside and signed up for 3G service — where I could (more on that in a bit). Here’s how the experience went and what I learned.

A week on the road in Boston: A surprisingly solid experience In October, I signed up for AT&T’s 2GB pay-as-you-go (no-commitment) service for $25. I spent five days in the Boston area, including two full days at a conference where I relied exclusively on the 3G service, with my Exchange and IMAP email accounts live the entire time. I also used the service at the airports in Chicago, Providence, R.I., and Boston, as well as in the planes while waiting at the gates. I also used the 3G service while taking the BART train to and from the San Francisco airport and while I got around Boston via the MBTA subway system (the T) for three days. In addition, I used it for a few hours each night in my hotels: one night at a Doubletree because I didn’t see the need to pay for Wi-Fi access, and three nights at the Lenox in Boston because its free Wi-Fi service’s signal was intermittent in my hotel room.

Oh, and while I was driving in central Massachusetts for some meetings, I used the 3G service and the iPad’s Maps app to act as a GPS navigator — which came in quite handy as I wandered off course twice but could glance at the map sitting next to me to see my current position compared to my destination.

During that period, I used about 210MB — a lot less than I expected. Had that been my only need for 3G that month, I could have spent just $15 for AT&T’s 150MB plan and saved $10. I especially liked the fact that when I tried to install some application updates, the iPad alerted me about those that were large (tens of megabytes) and suggested I wait until I was at a Wi-Fi location before downloading them. It also holds off on downloading large email attachments without permission — bandwidth-saving features that benefited both AT&T and me.

I was also surprised in a generally good way about the speed of the 3G service in that area. Sure, it’s not Wi-Fi, but I had no trouble doing my basic work, such as handling emails, editing stories via our online content management system (if only the Office-like MCE editor worked with mobile Safari and mobile Safari supported HTML5‘s contenteditable function!), and receiving and sending attachments. I especially loved the ability of the iPad’s Notes app and Quickoffice app to send text as attachments directly, so I could share my conference notes with colleagues during the conference itself.

And I was pleased that AT&T emailed me 14 hours before my pay-as-you-go plan expired, so I could cancel the auto-renewal. I wasn’t sure AT&T would have given me a heads-up and, in the process, could collect an extra month’s worth of fees (after all, carriers spend all day dreaming up ways to fool customers), so I added a “cancel 3G” item to my calendar to be safe. But AT&T did the right thing, for which it deserves credit.

My only complaint was the manner in which the iPad’s Mail app handled 3G slowdowns and outages in parts of the T subway. When using my Exchange account, it would hang until service was reestablished, rather than let me compose offline or switch to another app, as I could do when working with my IMAP account.

Three weeks in San Francisco: Mixed results on an uneven network My Boston experience was encouraging, and as I had nearly 1.8GB of data usage left, I decided to keep using the iPad wherever possible until my 30-day 2GB plan expired. Thus, I used it during my train-and-bus commute in San Francisco each day, as well as when I was offsite at meetings and waiting in lobbies. I even used it to and from the vet’s office to keep up on work (no, I wasn’t driving) and on the way via train to a friend’s birthday party, where, once again, I used it as a GPS navigator to find my way to a restaurant I hadn’t been to before.

My San Francisco 3G experience was generally positive, but the uneven quality of AT&T’s service was more noticeable here than in Boston. The data speeds were all over the map, and it was not unusual for the iPad to slip into EDGE and even GPRS modes — which run at about the speed of a modem (remember those?). New Yorkers report the same problems.

All that usage added another 300MB to the tally — still well below the 2GB allowance. Overall, in the course of the 30 days, I used 536MB total: 73MB outgoing and 463MB incoming. Had I watched videos, done lots of GPS navigation (which uses high-res maps), or played online games, my usage might have been higher. I think it’s fair to say AT&T’s claim that most users will find 2GB adequate is accurate, a claim it made when AT&T ended unlimited data plans earlier this year.

A month in Europe: Not as simple as it should be In late summer, I went to England for a cousin’s wedding and made a monthlong trip out of it, visiting relatives there for a week and a half, spending a short week in Paris, and another 10 days in Belgium. Wi-Fi is prevalent in those countries, but much of my time in England was spent in the Midlands and Wessex regions where various relatives lived, and a portion of the Belgium trip was also in a rural area, the Ardennes. There were big Wi-Fi-less zones.

Using your AT&T 3G service overseas is a sure way to go bankrupt — all the carriers charge scandalous roaming fees for data. It’s so bad that the European Union had to cap the roaming charges permitted for EU citizens traveling within its member countries, but that doesn’t help visiting Americans.

It’s very common in Europe to get a 3G SIM and pop it into your phone when you are in a different country; travelers tend to have a SIM for each nation they visit, with pay-as-you-go service on each (what the Europeans call SIM-only plans). The iPad too uses a SIM that you can replace, so I thought I would get a SIM in each country for the iPad, as well as one for an old Vodafone cell phone that my brother-in-law got in Australia and loaned us.

That plan worked great for the cell phone, where £10 or €15 paid for more than enough service in each country — but the iPad was a different story. The United Kingdom has four carriers that offer iPad 3G service, with 1GB of usage for just £10, but all had the same rule: You had to have the 3G SIM sent to a U.K. mailing address, even for pay-as-you-go use. (By contrast, for phones, including iPhones, you can walk into any store and pick up the SIM right there.) Anyhow, the timing didn’t work out, given we were at no one’s home for more than a couple days. We could’ve had the SIM sent to someone’s home a few days out, but that meant the number of days we’d actually have it wasn’t worthwhile.

I lived without 3G in England, but I had subscribed to a Boingo mobile-device Wi-Fi roaming account for $8, hoping to take advantage of the ubiquity of Wi-Fi hotspots in Europe. There were hotspots nearly everywhere, but Boingo didn’t have relationships with most of them. As a result, I was pretty much without Wi-Fi in England, except at a few relatives’ homes.

In France and Belgium, the 3G charges are much higher — even more expensive than in the United States, which is already among the highest in the world. Fortunately, most places we stayed had Wi-Fi included. (Boingo again proved to be a disappointment, but there were enough free hotspots to make up for its lack of relationships.) Signing up for iPad 3G service in France and Belgium is also pretty convoluted, even if you speak the language as I do. I didn’t bother trying.

Non-AT&T 3G in the United States for an iPad Despite my complaints about the hassles of getting 3G iPad service in those three countries, at least there were options to get 3G service for my iPad in Europe. Travelers to the United States can’t get a pay-as-you-go iPad 3G SIM from the sole carrier here, AT&T.

One option for such travelers (as well as for U.S. residents who don’t want AT&T service) is to use a Novatel MiFi device from a U.S. pay-as-you-go provider such as Verizon Wireless or Sprint’s Virgin Mobile subsidiary. The MiFi accesses the 3G network and connects the iPad or any device to it over a Wi-Fi pass-along connection. Verizon’s no-commitment pricing is attractive: $20 per 1GB of usage, though only on iPads. (Its rates jump significantly if you also want to connect other types of devices.) As you’ll soon see, the Virgin calculation makes for a tougher call.

If you choose the MiFi route, you have another box to carry, but that’s not a terrible burden for periodic on-the-go use. However, as several friends have discovered, the MiFi’s battery life is just 2 or 3 hours. The iPad runs 10 to 11 hours in my usage, even with 3G on all day. You really can’t use the MiFi-iPad combination to be online all day, as you can the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G model.

MiFi as an iPad’s 3G conduit is not all that viable — whether you’re a visitor to the United States or a U.S. resident looking to avoid AT&T.

3G when you need more than an iPad I’m amazed how much work I can with an iPad. In a few years, I think most people will have replaced laptops with iPads or similar slates, relegating today’s Windows PCs and Macs to workstations used for resource-intensive applications such as company budgeting, advanced analytics, page layout, video editing, and photo manipulation. We’ll all have PCs on the desk, but we’ll carry slates with us when on the go.

Today, that’s not the case, so there are times I need to bring a laptop on the road. How does 3G work there? In most cases, carriers are happy to sell you a USB 3G stick or a MiFi wireless router — along with a $50 and higher monthly plan you must commit to for a couple years. No way.

An alternative is to use a pay-as-you-go Broadband2Go plan from Virgin Mobile. I got its $80 Novatel USB 3G stick last spring after seeing it advertised as compatible with both PCs and Macs. Virgin had a 10-day, 100MB plan for $10; a 30-day, 300MB plan for $20; and a 30-day, 2GB option for $40. I used the $10 plan for a weeklong trip in July and found it quite useful. Note, however, that the installation software is not Mac-compatible, and Virgin’s tech support was clueless. But it does work on a Mac once you get Virgin to manually set up your account; just use Mac OS X’s Network system preference to turn it on and off.

But in August, Virgin ruined this plan by dropping the $20 option. Sure, the $40 plan now allows unlimited usage, but for business travelers not constantly on the road, it’s the 300MB plan that makes the most sense — and that’s gone. Basically, Virgin increased its rates by removing the middle option. I now rarely use my Virgin 3G service, as it’s only an option when I take one short trip a month with my laptop or when I’m on the road all month; even then, I have my iPad. When I take my MacBook Pro, I tend to use it only at the hotel or in an office, on Wi-Fi. My need for laptop 3G has decreased as the effective price for the service has gone up.

Verizon Wireless also offers pay-as-you-go mobile broadband plans, but they’re much more expensive and thus even less attractive an option.

Lessons learned from my 3G adventures What have I learned?

• The iPad can do a lot on the road, and you can get plenty of online usage out of it with the $25 AT&T no-commitment plan and a decent amount of usage with the $15 AT&T no-commitment plan.
• Complaints about the quality of AT&T’s San Francisco 3G service, at least for the iPad, are valid. It’ll vary based on what part of the country you’re in. I’d take a test-drive, buying and then returning a USB 3G stick after using it fo a week (you’ll have to pay that period’s data charges, of course) — as long as the carrier lets you return it for a full refund if you’re not satisfied.
• International travelers don’t have it as easy as they should using local 3G service for their iPads in the countries they visit.
• The MiFi is a poor substitute for the built-in 3G capabilities in the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G models — if you travel, pay the extra $130 for those models’ built-in 3G radio, especially as the MiFi costs $130 or more.
• The pricing of laptop 3G is sure to drive people to iPads instead.

This article, “My 3G adventures with the iPad,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Gruman et al.’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com.