Prepaid SIM for US roaming for your iPad

Having just purchased an iPad and been at VMworld in Las Vegas I figured I should write up how to get your iPad working with a US carrier.

I did some research before I went and there was a lot of complicated information about getting SIM cards, signing up plans etc.

Here is what I did.

• Jumped into a cab. Ask driver where is the nearest AT&T store.
• Walk into AT&T store, hold iPad out in front of me and ask person behind the counter "I want to get this on the internet with a pre-paid SIM".
• The lovely assistant (photo below) replied, "No problem Sir".
• She took my iPad, ejected my existing SIM, inserted a new AT&T one and waited for the activation screen to appear.
• Followed the online activation screen entering my credit card details for my Australian credit card (they recommended not using an AMEX as it can have issues with the region check). I selected a plan of 2G for 30 days for $25 USD.
• It started working.

Over the week I used 490Mb of data, way below the 2G I purchase. This was such an easy and fast process. There were about 3 other people in the store at the same time as me doing exactly the same thing. They even did nice things like tape my existing SIM card to the AT&T SIM caddy so I would not loose it and could easily store it.

Forget what you read on the Internet, its dead easy to get your iPad 3G service running in the US.

UPDATE 14/Sept : By default the plan does an Auto Renew so after the month it gives you another month. Before you leave bring up the service plan option and turn the auto renew off. If you forget to do this  simply ring 1-800-331-0500 and ask them to turn it off. It took me less than 2 minutes to get onto an operate and have this completed.

They mentioned that after 60 days the account will de-activate but that the SIM card is still good. So if when you return to the US you put the SIM in, you can bring up the service account information, re-enter your credit card details and be underway, no need to revisit an AT&T store. I will keep my SIM and try that on my next trip.

Rodos

VMworld 2011 Keynote

Some of the best bits from VMworld are the keynotes. The first was by Paul Maritz, the CEO. Here are my notes from the presentation. You can view the video of it on the Internet. Paul is not the most dynamic speaker, he is no Chambers on that front. However is is recognised as one of, if not the, smartest.

Last year there was the tipping point of more new apps being deployed on Virtualisation over physical. This year its now more virtualized across the entire installed base! More than half of anything is import for an industry.
1 virtual machine is deployed every six seconds, more than 20 million VMs across the globe. There are more VMs in flight with vmotion than there are airplanes in flight. More than 800k admins, 68k vcps and done with the support of the application vendors.

Is the cloud just timesharing rediscovered? It's about three profound things. It's the next major interation in the consumerisation of IT.

It's the canonical applications that define the generation of computing. In the mainframe era it was book keeping. It the late 80s it moved to the consumer world. New users through personal computing, the GUI, Intel architecture and the relational db. This allowed a new set if applications, client server, the Internet. CRM and non real time analytics.

With the Cloud we will see a new set of applications and the industry will change. Billions of new users and devices coming into play. Three years ago most devices connected to the net were PCs. In three years it will be less than twenty percent will be PCs. HTML5 might have a big impact.
The Relational Database can't cope with this new world. We need customized information in real time, for the facebook consumer of today.

How do we go forward from here? Let's ring fence off the mainframe. But what do we do with the client server world and migrate it to the new Cloud era.

How do we make it more efficient to run those apps we can't walk away from. Then what do we do about the renewal of applications.

Apps were built around real paper or what was paper on the screen. We need application renewal.

Lastly users are expecting to see everything on a new set of devices that can't be controlled by IT, whatever device they have in their hand.

How do we allow infrastructure renewal for those client server apps. To get operational efficiency. Virt can do this in a non disruptive way which is why it has been so successful. We can't just make more operational tasks but rather create more automated efficiency.

They had to have overlapping development efforts to release a new release of vSphere each year. Twice as many man hours in Q&A than development. This is like building hardware and has the same importance. First time Paul has seen a major bit of software be released on time with all it's original function set.

The new version is starting to do with this operational automation. Storage load balancing and tiering, automated host provisioning. The new version results in great scale, resiliency and automation.

A new schedule of how releases will be done. Not just vSphere but all the elements to deliver functionality, such as security, disaster recovery and Cloud portals. New versions of SRM, Operations, vShield and Director.

There are many service providers one delivering Cloud with Director. Plus virtual clouds such as NYSE. The vCloud Data Center program has expanded. A subset is clubbing together to give a world wide available cloud, global connect.

New virtual storage appliance for the SMB to get advanced features.
VMware GO to be expanded with things like patch management.
Application renew is the big effort in front of us. The new apps will be done by those under 35. Last 5 to 8 years developers have resulted against complexity and have new environments and fabrics. Let's give them those on the same underlying fabric. They are not interested in the low level details, more of a PaaS. They are willing to give up some control.

VMware are putting these elements under vFabric. Keys off Spring and now starts to include data, with the acquisition of Gem. A scale out in memory database.

Now SQLfire which brings an easier programming model with the scalable nature of GemFire.

Data Director will manage the task of administration of these databases. It can do backup and all those things. It's vSphere aware. They have taken Postgress and optimized it's memory management for a virtual environment and it can get much better density.

Cloud Foundry is about how apps will be built in the future, those new modern programming frameworks. It's open source and the community has been extending it. It's designed to be portable across clouds. There is a danger of going back to the lack of application portability, the Cloud should not be like this. What will be the new cloaking layer between hardware and the cloud? This needs to run from the provider down to the developers desktop. Developing a version for a memory stick.

Lastly we need to give a way to give people access to the applications that they need, continuing to invest in VMware View and releasing View 5.0. There will be more clients available.

PCs are not the only device any more. The PC can't belong to just one person any more. Horizon is about association of functions to people and not a specific device. But you now need to map people's activities to a device. Such as giving a user a virtual phone.

The PC was about automating the white colar worker experience of 1975. Xerox PAC started it and apple and Microsoft took up. The new workers and not using documents, they are streaming, filtering, they are not from the folder and document world.

What about the 50 percent which are not virtualized? Got to tackle the mission critical applications. That's what vSphere5 was about. Then start to work on those new applications and new way of doing things.

End of presentation.

Rodos