My wife booked us on a low key, no tech summer vacation. What? No Internet access for a week? Clearly, she is trying to kill me for the insurance money.
Ok, that was probably was a little bit over the top, but a week without Internet access for me is like serving a prison sentence of life without parole.
So I started looking at Mi-Fi hot spot access points. I wanted to buy a cheap one and then slap enough data service on it to last me the week. While I was looking at the AT&T offerings, I came across a note that suggests that the iPad 2, just like the AT&T iPhone 4, can be used as a Wi-Fi hot spot.
“AT&T offers several convenient billing options, none of which require a long-term contract. Customers can choose between AT&T’s prepaid billing options, which are charged to a credit card account, or recently announced postpaid plans that can be added to customers’ existing monthly wireless statements.
Customers may choose from the following options.
Monthly statements: $14.99 for 250 MB or $25 for 2 GB. Customers who exceed their monthly data allotment will be billed $14.99 for another 250MB on the $14.99 plan or $10 per 1 GB of overage on the 2 GB plan.
Credit card billing: $14.99 for 250 MB or $25 for 2 GB. Customers who exceed their monthly data allotment may choose to purchase another 250 MB on the $14.99 plan or purchase an additional 2 GB for $25 on the 2 GB plan.
Both options are month-to-month and do not require a long-term commitment.
The Personal Hotspot feature being introduced with iOS 4.3 is also available to customers who choose the $25 plan plus a $20 tethering option that provides an extra 2 GB of data.”
So it looks like you can use an iPad 2 as a Mi-Fi hot spot if you have the $25/month 2GB data plan and then pay an additional $20 for another 2GB data block for a total combined monthly data limit of 4GB.
Unlike a Mi-Fi puck, I know I ‘d be using the iPad 2 all the time and I like the idea of being able to go month-to-month with the iPad 2 service plan and still be able to add the Wi-Fi hot spot connection when I need to.
You can read the full AT&T Wireless press release on the AT&T website.