Anyone with an Ipad hooked up to 3G service have a preference? I work in Lexington Park but live in Calvert. Any insight to the better/ faster service would be much appreciated!

If you are getting the new iPad go with Verizon. I live in Lusby and LTE has full signal there. It's faster than my Comcast internet at home. AT&T doesn't have 4G coverage in our area yet. The data plans are priced pretty similar and you can use the iPad as a wi-fi hotspot on Verizon which you cannot do on AT&T. If you are going with the iPad 2 which isnt 4G/LTE capable, I'd go with AT&T since their 3G service is faster.

If you are getting the new iPad go with Verizon. I live in Lusby and LTE has full signal there. It's faster than my Comcast internet at home. AT&T doesn't have 4G coverage in our area yet. The data plans are priced pretty similar and you can use the iPad as a wi-fi hotspot on Verizon which you cannot do on AT&T. If you are going with the iPad 2 which isnt 4G/LTE capable, I'd go with AT&T since their 3G service is faster.

I'd mostly agree with this.

The last I heard, AT&T was still deciding whether to allow hotspot functionality on its iPad data plans - I'm not sure where they're at on that or when they'll come around and offer it (I suspect they haven't figured out how to handle the grandfathered unlimited data plans when it comes to this issue, that's something Verizon didn't have to consider).

Back to the OP's inquiry: It does depend somewhat on where you are at and where you might be using the iPad (e.g. with traveling). Verizon has much broader LTE coverage at this point, and that's very fast data service. But, in areas where LTE isn't available (on either AT&T or Verizon), AT&T tends to be considerably faster than Verizon. And they do have coverage in this area that they call 4G for marketing purposes (and that a lot of smartphone manufacturers call 4G for marketing purposes, though Apple does not) - it's faster than most 3G coverage, but considerably slower than LTE. I'm on AT&T and typically get about 6 Mbps up / 2-3 Mbps down, and I'm just south of Leonardtown. That's not LTE though, which can be 3, 4, or 5 times faster.

Here's something to think about with data speeds though. If you don't have a grandfathered unlimited plan, having much faster speeds doesn't do you much good - you can't use it for long before going over your limit and incurring significant additional charges. LTE + unlimited data is great. LTE + limited data (at about $10 per Gig) isn't nearly as great. And, for most of the things you'd do on a tablet, 5 or 6 Mbps is plenty fast. I'm glad I have LTE in my iPad, but it's not nearly as important to me as having unlimited data is (I'm one of the lucky ones that still has a grandfathered plan).

There are a number of smaller issues that might matter to specific people (e.g. being able to use an AT&T data sim in a Verizon iPad and thus being able to use an existing AT&T account for 3G service on it). But such things probably wouldn't matter to most people. The price plans on the respective carriers are similar, though you get an extra Gig of data on the AT&T $30 plan.

Big picture: Specific circumstances aside, it's probably not a big deal either way. If you tend to like Verizon better, go with Verizon. If you tend to like AT&T better, go with AT&T. If you want super fast data in the near term, go with Verizon (for the new iPad that is). I have an AT&T iPad and a Verizon iPhone - the data works consistently on both of them. I've generally found Verizon's customer service to be good, but I've had little need to interact with AT&T's customer service and thus don't have much of an opinion about it.

3 choices

if you have a smart phone and it supports tethering - pay your cell phone company $ 35 bucks a month for the privileged [my iPhone 4S on sprint has this feature]

or

if you are adept at electronic devices;

Root your Droid or Jailbreak your iPhone and purchase MyWi [iPhone app] and tether for free ....

[this is what I did ... save the added $$ for an iPad with cell connectivity - and the $ 35 bucks a month Sprint wanted to charge me - we have the family all you can eat Min, Texting, and Data I was not PAYING an additional $ 35 for occasional tethering]


unless you are at the beach or in the mountains there are a lot of places with wireless these days


if you use an 'Air Card' with your laptop use the USB on that to push new apps to your iPad

3 choices

if you have a smart phone and it supports tethering - pay your cell phone company $ 35 bucks a month for the privileged [my iPhone 4S on sprint has this feature]

or

if you are adept at electronic devices;

Root your Droid or Jailbreak your iPhone and purchase MyWi [iPhone app] and tether for free ....

[this is what I did ... save the added $$ for an iPad with cell connectivity - and the $ 35 bucks a month Sprint wanted to charge me - we have the family all you can eat Min, Texting, and Data I was not PAYING an additional $ 35 for occasional tethering]


unless you are at the beach or in the mountains there are a lot of places with wireless these days


if you use an 'Air Card' with your laptop use the USB on that to push new apps to your iPad

Just to add to your post, it also depends on your device, I have a Droid Bionic from VZW. There are easily adjusted settings in this phone and other newer models that have the ability to perform the tethering and hotspot without rooting the device also without paying for additional "tethering". I replaced a Blackberry with the Bionic due in part to this ability to tether and save $35.00 a month. The VZW rep even mentioned the ability when I was purchasing the device.