How to cancel your iPad AT&T Data Plan

We have been deploying iPads for our health-care application, and I transferred my iPad from a person credit account to a corporate account. In the process I though it was understood that my credit card would no longer be charged, but I kept seeing charges come up on my card. Now after paying an extra $75.00 or so, I’ve managed to cancel the credit card account; I’m hoping that I haven’t borked the corporate account, but we’ll see what happens at the beginning of next month.

Two reasons we chose AT&T over Verizon for our application:

• AT&T seems to have better coverage. As part of a settlement when Fairpoint acquired Verizon land-lines, AT&T acquired Unicel;  they took over the Unicel towers, and they had better penetration in the backwoods of New England.
• AT&T offers a lower-cost iPad data plan at $14.99 /mo. for 250 megabytes, which we’re hoping is sufficient for our application. The next step for is $30.00 / mo. for 3 gigabytes.

So, anyway, here are the steps I took to cancel my personal plan.

1. Go to http://www.att.com/ipad

2. On the right there is a link: “Add more prepaid data”.

3. Once you get there, you need to log in using the eMail address that you set up for the ATT account. (I know this address, because ATT sends me an eMail each month saying that I successfully updated my data plan.)

4. Click on Add/Edit domestic plan

5. There will be an option to Cancel Plan.

Once you choose that cancel option, you’l be presented with two options;

• Cancel plan and cancel your account
• Cancel plan and retain your account for sixty days

If you just want to “turn off” your account for a couple months,  choose the second option.  You can then relog in during the sixty day period and restart the plan.

This whole process seems actually pretty civilized (if it works).  It allows you to turn it on or off as needed.  It gives you the 3G option for when you are traveling, say, but then allows you to go for a couple months without a charge.

The $30.00 / 3 gig plan has been changed from my earlier personal plan of $25.00 / 2 gigs.  I have to say, 2 gigs seemed to be more than sufficient while traveling. The nice thing too is that if there is an ATT hotspot present, the iPad will automatically default to that, so you can avoid daily or hourly charges to those. And of course, the iPad defaults to wireless in the presence of any valid hotspot, to keep your 3G usage lower.