102005 lte logo

The Wall Street Journal notes that some early 3rd Generation iPad owners are finding it a bit too easy to burn through their monthly bandwidth allotments when on the faster LTE network.

The new iPad offers a much faster wireless data network called LTE. The speed of LTE can be up to 10 times faster than 3G networks. As a result, some have found they've burned through entire monthly allowances in a matter of days.

"It's kind of a Catch-22," says Mr. Wells, a 31-year-old Web developer who decided to pony up for another gigabyte. "It streams really fast video, but by streaming really fast video you tend to watch more video, and that's not always best."

Besides just encouraging the consumption of video, the new iPad's Retina display also encourages the use of HD content which takes up more bandwidth than their non-HD counterparts.

Top Rated Comments

Tastydirt Avatar
170 months ago
In other iPad news, the Retina display has more pixels.
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Jimmy James Avatar
170 months ago
Also, driving faster gets you to your destination more quickly, and spending more money burns through you budget faster.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Menopause Avatar
170 months ago
Come, join hands, let's call this Bandwidthgate and forward it to Gizmodo to blow it out of proportions.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
notjustjay Avatar
170 months ago
I hope this helps drive the carriers to offer better data plans. Canadian carriers seem to be notoriously bad for this. Look at the current data plans for the iPad 4G LTE: Rogers, Telus and Bell start their plans at 10 MB per month.

That wasn't a typo. Ten megabytes. Per month.

You could burn through that in ten seconds by watching a single YouTube video.

But hey, these are the same carriers that offer off-plan and roaming data rates at 3 cents per kilobyte. That's over $31,000 per GB of data!
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
johncrab Avatar
170 months ago
Someone needs to tell the WSJ that if you install larger pipes you can get more water through them in the same amount of time. Apparently, this really is rocket science.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
hobo.hopkins Avatar
170 months ago
That seems pretty straightforward; especially given that others had already discovered that iPhone 4s users used more data than iPhone 4 users (presumably because of HSPA+ availability for AT&T users).
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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