BASKING RIDGE, New Jersey and CUPERTINO, California—October 14, 2010—Verizon Wireless and Apple® today announced that iPad™ will be available at over 2,000 Verizon Wireless Stores nationwide beginning Thursday, October 28. Verizon Wireless will offer three bundles, all featuring an iPad Wi-Fi model and a Verizon MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot, for a suggested retail price of $629.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 16GB + MiFi, $729.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 32GB + MiFi and $829.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 64GB + MiFi. Verizon Wireless is offering a monthly access plan to iPad customers of up to 1GB of data for just $20 a month. In addition, Verizon Wireless will also offer all three iPad Wi-Fi models on a stand-alone basis.
MiFi 2200 is small enough to fit in a pocket and allows customers to create a personal Wi-Fi cloud capable of sharing the high-speed Internet connectivity of the Verizon Wireless 3G Mobile Broadband network with up to five Wi-Fi-enabled devices. The MiFi 2200’s rechargeable battery provides up to four hours of active use and 40 hours of standby time on a single charge.
Is this the beginning of a new relationship with Verizon that could actually go somewhere like Verizon providing wireless for the IPhone too?
AT&T will also be offering the Ipad in its stores. Not to mention that Target and Walmart will be selling it as well, just not bundled with an internet plan like the cell carriers.
And it’s been rumored for some time that Verizon will be getting an Iphone as soon as AT&T’s exclusivity deal ends.
The New York Times and Wall Street Journal both ran articles in the past week about Apple announcing a Verizon version of the iPhone no later than January. There were also rumors that next June’s iPhone will be able to run on both the Verizon and AT&T networks. A lot of people seem to be taking it for granted at this point.
I’m happy enough with AT&T’s service but I still hope this stuff turns out to be true so I can stop reading about rumors of an iPhone on Verizon’s network.
monthly access plan to iPad customers of up to 1GB of data for just $20 a month
1gb of data per month? 1gb/month for $20? Seriously? Are people really going to pay $20/month to send out a few emails and look at a low quality youtube video each day?
I use data on my iPhone every day for somewhat more than e-mail and youtube. When I checked my usage the other month I had used maybe 2GB for an ENTIRE YEAR. This included at least a few hours of watching streamed Tour de France coverage over 3G.
All the angst over data limits seems incredibly overblown to me. Unless you are torrenting high-def video over the 3G data network it’s hard for me to believe that you can really chew through that much data.
Edit: OK. I looked again to make sure and it was more like 2GB for six months. Sorry about that. Still.
I went with the el cheapo data plan for my iPhone and it works out perfectly for me. I do my downloading and streaming video at home or on wifi when out and about.
One big difference between a mobile device and the iPad, is mobile devices grab a mobile version of the web, but the iPad grabs the regular view. So, a few people got a shock on their bandwidth bills.
Weird. I rarely stream video but regularly top 2GB/mo on my Droid1. I do surf the net an absurd amount thanks to the nature of my job and also tend to download OS updates (custom ROMs) and the like with moderate regularity, which likely contributes a good chunk, too.
I do a lot of music streaming via Subsonic, come to think of it. . .
Regardless, this option (to me) seems weird. Have a CDMA-less 64GB tablet for $900 with tax, then saddle yourself with a ludicrously expensive data plan that’s dependent on the presence, charge, and continued functionality of a pocket-sized 3G-to-Wifi dongle. This is a good deal to someone how, exactly?
