Anyone know what happens when you hit the 200mb? Does it cut you off? Throttle you? Automatically bill you for the 500mb pass?
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Carrier How I activated T-mobile's free 200mb on iPad 3...
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I don't think you can. When you set up the account, the TMobile system records your iPad IMEI number and the SIM card number. If you switch SIM cards, the system would show a mismatch, and would likely not work (from what I understand).
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Reports are that it cuts you off.
Thanks, that makes sense and is more than fair. Was hoping someone said throttle you, but then who would ever buy data?
I set up 2 iPads with T-Mobile micro SIM's and got the free data plan easy peasy:
1. Got the cards for free from TMobile store
2. Installed SIMs
3. Turn off wifi
4. Open Safari, TMobile screen pops up
5. Filled out a short form (no credit card info necessary), and now have free data for both until 2095.
One more thing- Personal hotspot can be turned on in the Settings (though I haven't actually tested to make sure it works.) I guess TMobile doesn't mind how you use your 200MB.
I am not an existing TMobile customer. One of my iPads was a iPad 2 ATT, the other an iPad 3 Verizon. I bought 'em used, and never had a mobile data plan for either. This is a really great promotion, if I go on a trip or something and want more mobile data, easiest way for me will be to buy a block from TMobile- I guess that's what they're hoping for. 200MB is just enough for occasional spot use, but not small enough to be annoying. I'm in LA and in my limited usage I get a 3G signal and it's reasonably fast.
I wonder if you can register multiple SIM cards to a single tablet (since you can't use a registered SIM in a different device as it's locked to IMEI). But I don't really want to look the gift horse in the mouth here, I'm grateful for the free 200MB/month.
1. Got the cards for free from TMobile store
2. Installed SIMs
3. Turn off wifi
4. Open Safari, TMobile screen pops up
5. Filled out a short form (no credit card info necessary), and now have free data for both until 2095.
One more thing- Personal hotspot can be turned on in the Settings (though I haven't actually tested to make sure it works.) I guess TMobile doesn't mind how you use your 200MB.
I am not an existing TMobile customer. One of my iPads was a iPad 2 ATT, the other an iPad 3 Verizon. I bought 'em used, and never had a mobile data plan for either. This is a really great promotion, if I go on a trip or something and want more mobile data, easiest way for me will be to buy a block from TMobile- I guess that's what they're hoping for. 200MB is just enough for occasional spot use, but not small enough to be annoying. I'm in LA and in my limited usage I get a 3G signal and it's reasonably fast.
I wonder if you can register multiple SIM cards to a single tablet (since you can't use a registered SIM in a different device as it's locked to IMEI). But I don't really want to look the gift horse in the mouth here, I'm grateful for the free 200MB/month.
This is exactly what I did on my Verizon iPad. In the email it sent me to confirm it says my promotional pass will expire on December 20, 2013. Then what? Will I need a new SIM every month, or just re-sign up?
I got 200mb....
So do I need to do anything after 30 days, or will it renew on its own?
Same as everyone else. I suspect a typo...
Should just renew on its own.
No way to know for sure until the plans have been out for 30 days; we'll find out on December 1st.
Well, I got nearly this far but "Safari cannot open the page". The error says: "A data connection is not currently allowed". I have a T-Mobile signal of 3 bars on a Verizon 3rd generation iPad (WiFi turned off). I get foreigners speaking broken English when I try to contact T-Mobile for activation support. They want me to chose a pre-paid or post-paid data plan. WTF? If it's free, why do I have to chose any data plan? Any help here would be appreciated.
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Hmmm...I wish I had an answer or suggestion. For me, once I opened Safari I got the sign up screen.
Were these brand new SIM cards? I've done this a couple of times, they were all new SIM cards, and they all went right to the sign up screen where I was able to start the 200MB free plan.
Are you in a native T-Mobile coverage area? Do you see E/3G/4G/LTE or just signal bars?
It's possible you're in a partner/roaming area and data roaming isn't allowed for prepaid.
I got the same error message after inserting my new, free, T-Mobile phone SIM into my Verizon rMini, restarting the device, and trying to load a page in Safari. I also got several alerts telling me to go to Settings to establish a network connection.
I got it to work by going to Settings --> Cellular Data --> View Account and setting up a new account that way. It asked for my name, phone number (doesn't have to be a TMO number, as mine is through Verizon), email address, and a billing address. Did not ask for a credit card. (I had the option of choosing several different one-time "passes" or pre-paid recurring plans, but I left it as "On Demand Only.") After accepting terms & conditions, I got message saying it would take a few minutes to update my iPad. Less than two minutes later, another message saying the update was complete. Loaded up a website using LTE and it worked flawlessly.
I also got an email telling me that my "promotional" data will expire on 12/31/2013, but I gather from reading this discussion that it'll just renew for another "promotional" 200MB month after that.
I too was able to activate the free 200mb per month data on my iPad Air.
The nano sim card was actually pulled from the "unlocked" T-Mobile iPhone 5S I bought when it first came out. I have AT&T so I never activated that sim card with T-Mobile so I tried using that sim card and it worked.
The nano sim card was actually pulled from the "unlocked" T-Mobile iPhone 5S I bought when it first came out. I have AT&T so I never activated that sim card with T-Mobile so I tried using that sim card and it worked.
Just though I'd a add my $0.02 since I just did this. I had 2 T-Mobile nano SIM cards I picked up for $0.99 (you can get one free from T-Mobile right now so I ordered another to replace this one) just lying in a drawer and thought I'd give this a shot. I followed the video instructions an after rebooting had 5 bars of T-Mobile 4G on my iPad 3 Verizon model. When I opened Safari though, it wouldn't ever load any page or the activation page. I tried going to Google but it would just time out after a couple of minutes.
The solution for me was to browse to www.tmobile.com. As soon as I did that, I was asked if I wanted to setup a new account or connect to my existing one. I didn't have one so I setup a new one like everyone else here has done and it went on through.
I did not see the suggestion posted here about going through Settings > Cellular Data to setup my account. I suspect that might have worked as well.
Could have done this weeks ago but just got around to it. Very nice of T-Mobile to do this.
The solution for me was to browse to www.tmobile.com. As soon as I did that, I was asked if I wanted to setup a new account or connect to my existing one. I didn't have one so I setup a new one like everyone else here has done and it went on through.
I did not see the suggestion posted here about going through Settings > Cellular Data to setup my account. I suspect that might have worked as well.
Could have done this weeks ago but just got around to it. Very nice of T-Mobile to do this.
I was able to sign up for the free 200MB through Safari. However, on my iPad 3 AT&T version I do not have "VIEW ACCOUNT" under Cellular Data and can't enable LTE. When I put the AT&T sim back in then I can enable LTE and View Account just not with the T-Mobile sim
I am running iOS 7.0.4 carrier: T-Mobile 15.5
Yeah, I had the same problem when trying to activate the TMO sim on my wife's first gen iPad mini -- no "View Account" button, no LTE, and no luck activating via the website. But when I put her original verizon sim back in, the "View Account" button reappeared (after restarting the device). I never did figure out a solution. If anyone has any ideas...
The lack of View Account for T-Mobile appears to be "normal" on earlier devices.
I'm away from my ipad3 at the moment, but I seem to recall it just shows 4G on T-Mobile. I haven't dug into it but believe it's just a matter of the ipad3/mini1 not supporting T-Mobile's LTE bands.
Thanks for the input. You might be right about the "View Account" button simply not being there on earlier devices. Then I still have to figure out why TMO's activation website wouldn't let me get past the first screen without an error message...
It's been a while since I set it up on my ipad3. I know I had wifi turned off. I might also have tried using the Chrome browser. I had to try a handful of times before it went through. It seems there's a bit of flakiness on TMO's side.
Yes - I ran my 200 MB down, just to see what would happen.
You'll get a couple of notifications prior to running out - letting you know you're running out of data. Once you hit that point, you'll lose access to the Internet.
You'll still be able to purchase more data via the cellular option under settings - where you can by a day/wee/month pass.
In addition, once you're at your limit, all browser requests seem to get forwarded to some generic t-mobile landing page.
Nice thanks, hopefully I won't need it. I bought the t-mobile rMini but I forwarded my work phone (Galaxy SIII) to my personal iPhone, then I cut the verizon sim card and put it in my iPad. So I have plenty of data now. I will have to check but it's either unlimited data plus 2 or 3 GB of hotspot vise versa.