Isabel,
I've taken my AT&T iPad all over Western NC during the past 9 months, and let me tell you, even if AT&T is 5000% faster (which they aren't, obviously), 5,000% of 0 is still 0. For some reason, AT&T just doesn't have much presence in Western NC from what we can tell, and our real estate agent agreed that Verizon was pretty much the only show in town. We were looking at property there, and I'd say that we couldn't even pick up a signal on the iPad from at at least 2 out of every 3 properties we saw. This was around Bryson City and Cherokee. We also visited Boone and Blowing Rock with similarly poor results. The best places to pick up a signal were (sometimes) right in town or (sometimes) on a major interstate/highway. Otherwise it was a crap shoot.
That's in large part the reason that I'm trying out the Personal Hotspot option on my Verizon based iPhone. I discontinued my AT&T data plan on the iPad, and am going to get internet service to the iPad via the iPhone's wifi hotspot for a while, to see how that Verizon compares. I know in the mountains that a lot just depends on what side of the mountain you are on, regardless of what carrier is involved, but my husband often (thought not always) had a good Verizon signal on his blackberry when we had little to no AT&T signal on the iPad. I would not expect to get 3G data speed there from any carrier, though. I will just be happy if we can get any data signal at all with more consistency than AT&T's data.
We're hoping to go back next Friday, so I'll report back how our experiment goes - If you haven't gotten one by then, maybe that will be helpful.
April
On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 7:11 PM, billswife_1999 <isabel95@gmail.com> wrote:
We have android smartphones (Droid 2) with Verizon because their coverage is better in this area of Western North Carolina.
Wondering if there is any advantage buying an AT&T version of the IPad because their data rate is supposed to be faster.
Isabel
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