Experience of traveling through Great Britain and Germany with my iPad

Question

I wanted to share my experiences regarding traveling through Great Britain and Germany with my iPad.
It should be noted that my son brought his netbook with iTunes on it so it was simple to get the carrier file for microsims. I think if you are travelling without an additional system for the update, a quick visit to an apple store would take care of it.
*First stop: Scotland/England*
The day after I got to Scotland we found a 3 store. I walked in found a iPad specific sim hanging on the wall, took one and brought it to a rep who took my ten pounds and activated the sim. All in all, it took about five minutes. It popped it in when we got back to the hotel and connected the iPad to my son’s netbook, iTunes popped up, I told it not to sync and then it offered to update the carrier file. I clicked okay and a few minutes later I had 3G up and running with 250 megs of pre-paid data. In my last few days in London I did another 10 pound top-up as we found ourselves relying on the mapping functionality a lot.
Coverage-wise, 3 was quite good. The only places I had problems was when we were on a four-day hike along Hadrian’s Wall where I found the signal coming and going.
All in all it was a great experience and I give it an A.
*Second stop: Germany*
Germany was a completely different thing.
Both Vodaphone and O2 shops do not have sims in stock. You need to pre-order the sims and have them mailed to a German address. On top of that, one of them (I can’t remember which) wanted 25 euro just for the sim. The reps in the store were always unhelpful, many did not even know that iPad sims were available form their respective companies and several mentioned that because “no one wanted an iPad in Germany” they didn’t see the point in carrying the sims. So no 3G in Germany for me.
On top of that, WiFi was not all that common. Even places that advertised free wifi often told us it was currently broken.
So, iPad travel experience in Germany: D-

Answer 1

I just returned from 1 of only 2 carriers(telcel main office only)where I live in Los Cabos, Mexico, I just paid $149 pesos/$11.60 US for a sim and I was told they needed me to bring my ipad in, after about 1 hour they finally gave me my sim, and then said at least 24 hours for activation. There is no easy way from what I have been told to add money/time, you can go to their main office and pay for exactly whatever plan you want, you must return to their office to renew using this method, the other way is to buy a prepaid card and supposedly enter the code into the ipad, but none of the cards denominations correlate with the plans that are offered. I have lived here 20 years so nothing surprises me anymore. It was basically a cluster---, due to the fact nobody seemed to have a clue about the ipad, I jokingly asked if I was their first ipad customer, they said I was their 2nd. So it seems to me, if you had planned to use this "magical ipad" for travels in different countries, you had better make sure you have wifi, or take your laptop instead. I am somewhat disappointed that apple wants to sell millions of these, yet does not make sure their carriers know what is going on. Either I misunderstood all the hype and ad's, or this thing probably is best used only where you know you can receive wifi. I bought 3 ipads, this last one a 3g, I can see I will have to bring my laptop on all travels if I want to be assured of having internet, it seems apple should concentrate a bit more on customer service instead of sales. I will update when and if I get a connection.
buenos suerte…