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Tuesday, May 4th, 2010store | Posted by Editor - Blog News Service

AT&T’s international 3G data plans for iPad:expensive

AT&T's international 3G data plans for iPad:expensive

AT&T's international 3G data plans for iPad:expensive

With its roomy display, slim profile and 10-hour battery life, the iPad makes for an ideal travel companion, especially if you have a long plane flight in your future. But if you plan to take the 3G-embedded version of the iPad overseas, prepare to pay up — big time — for the privilege of roaming on international 3G data networks.

AT&T has revealed its international data plans for the iPad, AppleInsider reports, and apparently they’re the same as the ones for the iPhone — which, unless you happen to be Daddy Warbucks, is not good news.

The cheapest international 3G plan starts at $24.99 for 20MB of monthly data (as per the AppleInsider report), which comes out to $1.25 per megabyte. To put that in perspective: The Yahoo! home page weighs in at about a quarter of a megabyte, so a visit to yahoo.com via your 3G iPad through AT&T’s international roaming plan will cost you more than a quarter. Want to check out the news on the New York Times home page, which averages about half a megabyte? That’ll be 62 cents, please. Check your email (hope you don’t have any attachments) and watch a YouTube video or two, and you’ll run through your 20MB allotment in a heartbeat.

AT&T does offer other international plans for the 3G iPad with more monthly data, but don’t expect to save much cash by buying larger buckets of megabytes. For $59.99, you can get 50MB a month — about $1.20 a megabyte — while $119.99 gets you 100MB for 30 days.

The only plan with a reasonably big allotment is the biggest, priciest plan: $199.99 for 200MB, or a buck a megabyte. That’s still cutting it close, given that most iPhone users consume about 250MB of data a month — and to add insult to injury, AT&T’s domestic 3G iPad data plan includes a 250MB option for a mere $15 a month.

So yeah … for that money, I’d expect a gold-plated MicroSIM to go with my international roaming plan. (And by the way, don’t even think about going over your monthly allotted megabytes, or you’ll have to pay a half-cent overage charge per kilobyte, or about $5 per megabyte.)

Speaking of MicroSIMs: What about swapping out the AT&T MicroSIM that comes with the 3G iPad for one from a local data carrier? Well, theoretically, that’s possible; once Apple announces iPad availability and pricing overseas on May 10, we might have a situation where you could get a MicroSIM with a local iPad 3G plan for a specific country. Whether that actually happens, though, is another question; and don’t forget, the MicroSIM card used by the iPad is a lot smaller than standard, readily available SIM cards you find in most other GSM phones.

Another option, of course, is to simply stick with Wi-Fi when you’re traveling abroad with the iPad (or any smartphone, laptop or netbook, for that matter). As always, though, be careful about sending unencrypted usernames, passwords or other sensitive data over an open Wi-Fi hotspot.

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