UK ipad PAYG (for US visitor)

[svenn]

This is probably beaten to death, but current info is always nice 😀 I will be coming into LHR Heathrow and bringing my US ipad (AT&T), and I plan to pick up a payg sim. It appears a lot of companies require UK address, but it looks like 3Mobile has an option that does not. Can I just pick up a 3 sim, put it in, and be online, or am I missing something? Are there any other providers that will do what I need? Thanks

 

[Mac.World]

This is probably beaten to death, but current info is always nice 😀 I will be coming into LHR Heathrow and bringing my US ipad (AT&T), and I plan to pick up a payg sim. It appears a lot of companies require UK address, but it looks like 3Mobile has an option that does not. Can I just pick up a 3 sim, put it in, and be online, or am I missing something? Are there any other providers that will do what I need? Thanks

You can get pay and go sims from any provider here that supports iPads. O2 is the company equivalent to AT&T though and provides the best overall coverage for me when I travel all over England and Wales.

 

[byke]

I bought a "3" card a couple months back for about 10 quid ... with no id or address etc, and it justs plug and play ... nothing else. I used it in London, and while it works I found generally the speeds are all very similar (generally rubbish). But 3 at the time offered the best value in terms of costs and bandwidth.

I also have had an O2 card in london for my iphone and can say it was just as rubbish in terms of bandwidth.

 

[iStudentUK]

3 are much more relaxed, they are the smallest of the big operators if you know what I mean. They try to make it easy for people to get on their network! I think you should be fine with them on PAYG.

I was sceptical of 3, as they always had the reputation of having poor signal. But my gf went to 3 at chrstmas and they are fantastic. Very good coverage and all of it is 3G. I'll be switching to them from O2 when I can. In major cities the speed difference between my O2 phone and her 3 one is significant

 

[pmudditt]

I think 3 offer a very good service and very good value for money, plus if you go to Argos, you can get a 1GB payg sim at half price £5 rather than the £10 you would pay in the 3 shop. No registration just pop it in and you are good to go.

 

[Gav2k]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

If u search eBay uk u will find 12gb prepaid cards. That's what I use

 

[j_maddison]

You can get pay and go sims from any provider here that supports iPads. O2 is the company equivalent to AT&T though and provides the best overall coverage for me when I travel all over England and Wales.

While I don't dispute that for you, and the places you visit, O2 have given you good coverage. They're overall 3G coverage in the Uk is the worst of all the networks. I would avoid them like the plague, unless you plan to only visit cities in the UK, and not use the iPad much when travelling between these cities.

This article showing off com (UK Regulator), while being slightly out of date, gives a good indication of how the networks fare for 3G coverage:

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/ofcoms-3g-coverage-maps-o2-embarrassed-49302921/

As a past O2 employee, I still feel a little loyalty towards them, my personal mobile and all of the voice connections my family has are with O2. They are not subsidies connections either.

If you're going to chose a network in the UK for 3G coverage, stick with 3 or Orange. They have a far better footprint than the other networks.

 

[Mac.World]

While I don't dispute that for you, and the places you visit, O2 have given you good coverage. They're overall 3G coverage in the Uk is the worst of all the networks. I would avoid them like the plague, unless you plan to only visit cities in the UK, and not use the iPad much when travelling between these cities.

This article showing off com (UK Regulator), while being slightly out of date, gives a good indication of how the networks fare for 3G coverage:

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/ofcoms-3g-coverage-maps-o2-embarrassed-49302921/

As a past O2 employee, I still feel a little loyalty towards them, my personal mobile and all of the voice connections my family has are with O2. They are not subsidies connections either.

If you're going to chose a network in the UK for 3G coverage, stick with 3 or Orange. They have a far better footprint than the other networks.

As i used to road race motorcycles, i went to nearly every race track in England and Wales, and the only track that i had any issues with reception was Cadwell Park, but that is really out in the middle of nowhere. I really can't complain about O2 in the slightest. Maybe Orange has better overall coverage, i don't know, but O2 has been good to me for 3 years.

 

[j_maddison]

As i used to road race motorcycles, i went to nearly every race track in England and Wales, and the only track that i had any issues with reception was Cadwell Park, but that is really out in the middle of nowhere. I really can't complain about O2 in the slightest. Maybe Orange has better overall coverage, i don't know, but O2 has been good to me for 3 years.

For voice, they're great. Really can't complain, and with work I've been all over the UK too. Scotland, England, and I live in Wales. O2's 3G coverage is practically non existent in Wales though. It's fine in the main cities, but even in the larger towns - Merthyr, Aberdare etc, you can't get 3G signal.

In my last job, we offered 3G sim cards on short term rentals to construction companies. It was a no brainer for us, 3 offered the best coverage, even if we didn't get the best commercial terms from our supplier, and 3 direct were awful.

I used Orange to start with, but I didn't like how their WiFi agreement with Openzone never seemed to work/ connect. So I switched to 3, because they were 'cheaper'. I found them to be marginally better for coverage.