iPad 3G sign-up keeps it simple (stupid)

John Brownlee ()

iPad 3G sign-up keeps it simple (stupid)

When the iPad was first announced, Apple promised that the process for signing up for 3G service would eschew the iPhone’s Mephistophelean contract with AT&T. Instead, it would be simple, allowing end users to sign up and cancel their 3G service on a month-by-month basis.

If these screenshots of the iPad’s Settings panel are anything to go by, Apple’s been just as good as their word here. It’s hard to imagine, in fact, how signing up for 3G could be any simpler: you don’t even have to deal with AT&T.

Apparently, all you do to sign up for 3G is open up the iPad’s settings, plunk in your credit card information and then specify your order size: 250MB of data per month for only $14.99, all-you-can-gobble for $29.99. Simple! And if you sign up for the 250MB plan, you’ll get three alerts — 20 percent, 10 percent and empty — to let you know when you’re running low on data and affording you the option to top up with some more.

This is about as painless as it gets. I just hope international telecoms follow AT&T’s lead here and keep it simple, stupid. There’s just no room in my budget for yet another two-year data contract at this point.

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[via Gadget Lab]

10 comments »

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in iPad, News |

  • http://ihbs.co.uk Ben

    Im interested in seeing what the UK will do with this. Not sure about america, but as far as i know theres never been this sort of thing with O2!

  • talhah

    nice…Mr Jobs had me at hello. These little things are just the cherry on top!

  • Don Pope

    This is outstanding. However, I don’t see an option to make it “non-recurring”. I guess you have to cancel manually.

  • Charli

    yes don you have to cancel manually

    i’m a little surprised there’s not an option to have it on your ATT account.

    also, what about activation fees. I assume there is one for the initial, but what about if you cancel and re-up later.

  • Nathan

    I doubt Rogers in Canada will implement this. Everything remotely related to online “support” sucks with Rogers. I always give up and just call them to change things.

  • Andrew

    I’d be really curious to know what the setup will be for international travel. For example, if I pick up the device with the 3G capability in the USA (but don’t activate it), can I travel to the UK and drop in a Three SIM with a pre-paid data plan on it?

  • strangel00p

    And $10 for the use of “Mephistophelean”!

  • porkchop1234

    People in the U.S. call AT&T the devil and here in Canada we call Rogers Satan’s child. I doubt this will fly with Rogers Canada. I’m expecting Damien to bleed us for more money and demand users to sign their souls away for 2 to 3 years.

  • Beardy

    @Andrew:
    Unless I’m very much mistaken, iPad won’t work on the Three network in any scenario.

  • L J Moloney