WiMAX and iPad Connection!

It’s been an enthralling opening week for iPad . Over 500,000 iPads were sold during its first week, and we found apple mentioning “demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad™. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.”

Expected average data consumption for iPad users will stay around 3 GB/Month as per my estimates. Average monthly data consumption will remain somewhere between iphone and notebooks. The increased data consumption of iPad users can present wireless operators with some serious challenge to deal with in coming days. We already hear about 3G cellular networks being swamped with growing data traffic from millions of Apple iPhones. Although carriers are optimistic of offloading a large amount of iPad traffic to Wi-Fi access points when using services indoors and charge a different tariff for that. However I am really unconvinced about availability of Wi-FI networks all the time. Although , AT&T has scored a deal to offer unlimited 3G data on 3G-capable versions of the iPad for $29.99 a month. I still suppose that MACRO networks will serve most of the user generated traffic from iPads .

iPad is a real nice data centric deice which is capable of doing almost everything a net-book can perform. I think real drivers of data in iPad would be social applications especially photo sharing, streaming video like YouTube and movie downloads from Netflix etc. In his new whitepaper “STATE OF THE (MOBILE) BROADBAND NATION” Chetan reported that average performance of 3G networks in US is around 250 kbps in downlink and 120 kbps in uplink.

I suggest if you come across to watch you tube video at these 3G networks than expect some delay, buffer and degraded performance. Although this is not anticipated in Wi-Fi zones but serious video challenges is expected in 3G Macro zones. If you not leveraging video in iPad and then you are underplaying.

Nevertheless the real beauty of iPad is the fact that device is fully unlocked and there is no contract. I suggest you go ahead and test the new 4G WiMAX RAN available in to AT&T price, than even better as you will be able to connect your 3G iphone, your laptop and iPad and get unlimited Wi-Fi US with the 3G/4G hotspot device available with sprint or clearwire. It would be a good idea to test these handy 3G/4G hotspots which can really take your iPad experience couple of times higher with new 4G based WiMAX RAN. If you can find an unlimited data plan similar data.

GIGAOM reported average data rates of 1.2 to 1.7 Mbps in downlink and .6 to .8 Mbps in uplink from sprint 3G/4G mobile hotspot in WiMAX coverage zone. That’s what I am saying; WiMAX and iPad compliment each other when it comes to data.