[stevetursi]

Yes, it's 2013 and both Verizon and ATT are still charging $50/month for 5GB. Until unlimited plans at reasonable prices become available, cloud+mobile is useless to me and it'd be more affordable to store media on my device instead of streaming it.

[freehunter]

T-Mobile may work for your use case (if you're in a coverage zone), with 5GB of their 4G and unlimited EDGE (it was good enough for the original iPhone which relied exclusively on HTML5 apps, right?) for $30/mo prepaid. I don't know how well the iPad works on T-Mobile's network though, YMMV.

[stevetursi]

Yeah, I'd love T-Mobile, but pretty much every friend/coworker who uses T-Mobile complains about coverage. It's apparently pretty dismal in my area (North Jersey/Hudson Valley.)

[nknighthb]

Stream a couple HD movies. There goes your 5GB.

[freehunter]

So god forbid you watch your movies on the go in SD in order to eke out a few extra showings. 5GB is still worlds better than AT&T offers, and there's still unlimited EDGE.

[nknighthb]

Stream 3 SD movies and there goes your 5GB.

EDGE is not remotely useful in the context of this conversation, I have no idea why you keep bringing it up. The only thing you might possibly hope to stream at EDGE speeds is audio, video is simply not an option. And (re-)installing apps of any substantive size is likewise impractical.

I am in no way ignorant of the mobile data options available to me in the United States. I simply know them to be an utterly inadequate to substitute for adequate local storage, and I can't even begin to understand how you consider them to be otherwise. Feels like you're just here to shill for T-Mobile.

[fivethree]

Which why it's awesome that it's 2013 and anywhere worth being has WIFI.