PAYG for I-pad

travelgran

Is there such a thing as PAYG that does not come in monthly "chunks" and if so with which company? I generally use a Wi-fi connection and would only use the roaming option very intermittently. I'm looking for something that would allow me to pay a certain amount of money and use it until that amount is used up as I do on my cheapie mobile phone. I'm not a heavy user!
Thanks

split_second

erm......probably not, i am pretty certain that apple were the ones that wanted a system of automatically reoccuring payments for data

GRM

Gigabags from giffgaff may suit depending on how heavy and/or intermittent your use will be.

£5 for 500MB.
£7.50 for 1GB.
£12.50 for 3GB.

Expires after a month though.

Alternatively, sambamobile.com looks interesting. I bough one of their SIMs and have 'earned' 427MB so far. All the ads can be muted and they don't appear to be aware of the concept of browser tabs....

Buzby

How does an 'annual chunk' grab you? I use 3UK, and their 12Gb offering that lasts a year (or earlier if you use it up first). This required the SIM to be trimmed for the latest iPad, but is otherwise OK.

This cost me £48 on a well-known auction site. (Folk buy the dongles with the SIM, and then sell on the latter). Plenty of data, and no worries if I'm out of WiFi range!

katewills

thank you!

StuC75

what about the ovivo ipad option - £5 once topup and then 1gb month for life (and £5 credit to use - add supported).. seems worth a shot??

buglawton

Many mobile providers have something like a 25 MB a day usage for say 50p or 75p deal. Somewhere there's a 50MB per day deal for £1, probably Vodafone. All pay as you go no commiment. OK for email and browsing for an hour or so, just avoid streaming or online newspapers apps. Be sure that when at home all day, you turn Network Data OFF, while can keep WiFi on.

Buzby

No need for this on an iPad - it will always use WIFi first, and as your home network will be recognised, there's no issues of using the 'wrong' one.

As for Ovivo, I dislike MVNO (virtual) operators as I'd rather deal with the organ grinder and not the monkey. (They use Vodafone). Since they cannot even provide micro SIM cards, expecting you to cut down your own - this doesn't instill confidence. Also who else can provide 12Gb mobile BB for £50?

buglawton

Buzby wrote: »

No need for this on an iPad - it will always use WIFi first, and as your home network will be recognised, there's no issues of using the 'wrong' one.....

With IOS 4 and 5 on both iPhones and iPads with built-in 3g, there is a known and annoying issue regarding data. The machine goes into auto standby and disconnects its 3g and WiFi. Then every 15 mins precisely, something like a notifications sweep happens that requires a data connection (this cannot be turned off - it's built into IOS). This sweep turns on the 3g connection first and momentarily later, the WiFi if present. A number of bytes will get consumed on the 3g connection.

There a numerous complaints about this all over the 'net, and the ones who are most annoyed are the pay as you go people who get charged a fixed amount - e.g. 50p or £1 - per day for any amount of data, even say 1/100th of a MB. So even sitting at home and never travelling, your iPad would cost £15 per month on that 50p example.

While on Android there are widgets and software gizmos aplenty that help you manage this nicely, with Apple IOS the only option is to delve deep into the settings & turn off Network data (not WiFi) except for the days you travel.

[ in the context of Ovivo - which I just now read up on - it looks like the data leakage trickle might not matter as it appears you get 1 GB free data per month. Too good to be true I wonder? ]

Buzby

I monitor my data usage with an app, and it confirms inbound and outbound data amounts using wifi and UMTS (3G). With mobile data turned on, but using WiFi, my data use of non-wiFi was 5kb over 7 days.

Using you example, my iPad 'use' cost me nothing, as I had 12Gb in standby for 12months.

travelgran

Thanks for all the info. I'll follow up the information and decide what's best for me.