iPad Data Rates too High? Could be Worse.

iPad Data Plan Cost by Country

Are you the proud owner of an iPad 3G? Bad news for those of you in the United States, and even more so if you are a resident of France, Belgium, Luxembourg or the Netherlands.

According to a report by Tableau Software, iPad users in the US pay some of the highest prices in terms of dollars per gigabyte (GB) of data on the iPad, compared to other monthly data plans across different wireless carriers worldwide.

Viewing the interactive chart above, Hong Kong and Singapore have the cheapest data rates for the iPad, at plans priced at less than one-twentieth the cost per GB U.S. users are forced to pay.

Dallas-based AT&T is the exclusive data service provider for the iPad. While initially offering an unlimited data plan for iPad 3G customers for $29.99, AT&T subsequently rescinded that offer, leading to lawsuits and many upset customers who had ordered the 3G iPad, but had not yet received the device and were therefore unable to purchase the plan.

Now, AT&T provides iPad 3G owners in the U.S. with 2 data plan options, both lacking a contract requirement, 250 MB of data for $15 a month or 2 GB of data for $25 a month.

“You can get a GB of data for 51 cents in Singapore,” says Ross Perez, a data analyst at Tableau. “What’s so special about the U.S. that we pay so much more?”

Are you surprised by the pricing for iPad 3G data plans? If you have a choice with respect to the amount of data you can purchase each month, have you chosen a more, or less expensive pricing option?

The author of this post is Jeff Cormier

Creator of Digital Deconstruction, write for The Next Web, iPadFan, and more. Animal, music, literature, history lover, law school graduate. http://about.me/jffcrmr

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John

Here in South Africa we have the dubious honor of having one of the highest 3G data rates in the world. consider yourselves lucky USA. While the iPad is not officially available here, those like me, have bought our iPads in the USA and elsewhere. To use the 3G we hack our regular sim to a smaller micro sim size, and then use any regular cellphone data package. We pay, on average, ZAR R 300.00 / GB, which translates to around USA $ 42.00 / GB, at the very cheapest – buy smaller data packages, and the cost soars to 20 USA cents per MB (around $ 200 / GB)
Chris48

It's good that in Australia at least it is relatively reasonable to use. I am with Optus and they now have this plan where you can share your iPhone data with the iPad for an extra $10 per month