Making my ipad work in Europe

We took our Ipad , 2 i touches and a mac book air on our recent 3 week trip. We do not have the at&t version but have wi-fi, we just went to hotels,starbucks or mc Donalds etc that have free wi-fi and just entered in the password given to us, or even paid very little for online time. it was so simple- my kids could check-in on facebook at most places we visited. the Apple store sells an international adaptor set, but most simple converters work too- for charging! I don't think you need a sim card.....unless u need access everywhere?

Unless you want an extremely high bill when you return you do not want to use a roaming 3G network, there for you need a local sim card and data plan. Truthfully I would just turn off the 3G, and only use the free wifi function. Free or very low cost wifi is available nearly everywhere.

Brenda, check out this message thread in this sub-forum: AT&T data and call plans. In short: the data plan from AT&T would still cost a fortune. A local SIM would be orders of magnitude cheaper. My daughter has an iPad, but I haven't played with it much. Are iPads locked to AT&T the same as iPhones? I don't know. If it is, you'll need to have it unlocked so it can be used with a foreign SIM, if you go that option. The cheapest, easiest course is to just use it on wifi.

We had free wifi almost everywhere we stayed (in Italy last year and Spain this year). No need to incur charges using the 3G.

Unless you have an IPad that I have never seen... There is no place for a SIM card. Your iPad is like my iPhone. You will need to purchase from AT&T an international data plan, which is not cheap ( data is different from international voice). My iPad does not have 3G, but I had no problem connecting to any Wifi in italy or Greece... The issue was finding Wifi in Italy outside my hotel. Places have it, but by italy law, you have to show ID to be given the access code. In April, I bought the biggest data plan (and voice) for my iPhone. I was fine in 5 days for data... But was very conscious about turning it on only when I needed it. I use my GPS religiously, and it gobbles data. My iPhone gps was better than my Italian cousin's gps. It was well worth the $100 I paid. However... AT&T did not tell me that it is a prorated plan. I turned the service off as soon as I returned to US (I was gone a week), instead of the 30 days... Do they wanted to charge me $180... Pro rated in essence assumes for 20Gig, that you are using 2/3Gig per day. When I called, they lowered the bill to $100.
In November, I will go back to Italy for a month, and will turn on international data and voice on the IPhone. I don't go anywhere without the IPad... So I will bring it for when I have wifi. Ciao.

Hi, we just returned from France and Italy with the same iPad that you have. We bought the AT&T data plan for 2 reasons - we weren't sure how available wifi would be, and we didn't want to spend valuable touring time in our destination cities hunting down the right kind of local sim card. That said, wi fi was almost universally available. We had trouble getting it in Venice and Florence. Otherwise everywhere we went in France and in Italy we were able to get wifi at our hotels etc...for the cities where we had to use the 3G, I was glad to have it. We overestimated the amount of data we would need and ended up not using all of the data plan we purchased, which was a waste of money!! Next time, I would probably buy the data plan just to have in case of no wi fi, but I will buy a much smaller one!! You will love traveling with the iPad...fantastic!!!!

MaryL, "Unless you have an IPad that I have never seen... There is no place for a SIM card" There are two different versions of the iPad's. One provides only Wi-Fi capability and does not have a SIM card. That appears to be the model that you're using. The other models add 3G (Cellular) internet capability and those will use a SIM card.

Brenda...I have the same version iPad 2 that you have. We recently were in Italy and Sweden. In italy, we purchased a Vodaphone microsim card for our iPad and just exchanged the AT&T microsim for the Vodaphone microsim. It cost 10 euros for 1 Gb of service and we had wifi anywhere in Italy, even in the mountains. It was great as not everywhere that we stayed or went had wifi. We were even able to skype with our children while walking around Begnava, so that they could see the village. When we went to Sweden after Italy, the Vodaphone service transferred to a Swedish company, so that we could continue to use it there. On our return to the USA, we just swiped out the Vodaphone microsim card and replaced it again with the AT&T microsim. Easy and inexpensive. Hope this helps.

Thanks everone. Based on feedback, and given that I will spend time between Paris, Florence and Venice, I think I'll depend mostly on wi-fi in France, but pick up a microsim card for Florence and Venice, just in case. Happy travels!

Brenda, I believe the iPad's are supplied "unlocked" so you should have no trouble using it with a Micro-SIM in Europe. You may want to confirm that with AT&T though.