The iPad Tour is well underway. I have been in the UK since early Saturday AM, and have now scoped out (with some help from bospdaug’s Seamus, and the friend we’re staying with here) the correct way to roam with iPad data while in Europe. Originally, before leaving Boston, I had bought a small amount of wireless data from AT&T at an exorbitant price for both my iPad and iPhone, and also a very inexpensive wifi roaming plan from Boingo. Up until now, I’ve used the Boingo extensively, and the 3G, not so much. It is really painful, for example, to worry about megabytes, and for example, not to have Google maps at your disposal. Someone I asked for directions on the street yesterday pulled out their iPhone and said kind of dismissively: “This is so easy now, isn’t it?” Yes, if you have wireless data! After a lunch with Seamus, and some research online. I found that I could get a free micro sim card from O2 (iPad UK carrier) and then, with the help of a paper clip, and a little work, switch from AT&T to O2 for then duration of my time in the UK. Here’s how it all went down: First a visit to an O2 store in Tunbridge Wells, UK, where I described myself as a: “Roaming data refugee from the United States, looking to contribute some money to the UK Economy”. This went over well with the store staff, and the small crowd of teenaged girls who were watching my iPad from a distance, and whispering “brilliant!” to each other (apparently iPads are still rare here). I was handed an O2 Sim— and described some prices: £2 per day for 500MB, or £10 for 1GB, £30 for 3GB/mo. All of this beat $119 for 100MB, from AT&T international roaming, don’t you think? It all went slightly strange at this point, as the O2 staff at the store handed me a sim ejector, and asked if they could observe— …as none of the staff, nor the giggling teenagers in the corner had actually done what I was about to attempt, that is swap the SIM in an iPad for another service— EVER. So I swapped the SIM, and not a lot happened. There were now a few ‘Sim Applications’, available in ‘Carrier Settings’, none of them seemed to do much— and I was seemingly stuck. Just then, and this is not unlike the scene at the end of the original Star Wars, where Han Solo swoops in unexpectantly from the glare of the sun, and disables Darth Vader’s squadron, so Luke can destroy the death star— a young woman wearing a ‘Microsoft Mobile’ golf shirt walks into the store, on some other pretense, hears my conversation and says to me: “I used to work for Apple until recently, and I know how to do this, and I can help you” The trick is: Swap SIM card Sync with iTunes on your macto update carrier settings Get signed up on O2’s free wifi to connect online You now get a signup form option in your carrier settings (you need a UK address of some kind to make this work) and you’re off to the races, contributing £2 to the UK economy. Only one problem— my MacBook is back in Boston, 3000 miles away. No worries— there was an ‘iShop’, a kind of pseudo Apple store in the same mall as O2— connecting my iPad to one of their macs for a moment updated my carrier settings, and I could now deploy my credit card and 2£. I am all signed up, and using 3G on a train into Central London. I will get to try the same trick next Tuesday in Nice, France at Orange, the next leg of my journey.
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