iPad and foreign credit cards

[Anonymous]

Hello!

So O2 have provided clarity on their iPad rates but I can't get an answer to my question and I'm hoping you might be able to assist.

I have a colleague coming to the UK with a US iPad. It seems he can pop in to an O2 store and pick up an mSim to use in his iPad but I can't find out if he can use his US issued credit card to buy time on the Sim. Anyone know?

[Anonymous]

No he cannot buy time (or indeed activate the sim card) without a UK address. As sheepdog guessed, the registration proforma (automatically brought up when the card searches for a 3G service) will not accept a US address. This has already become a point of contention as many customers assumed that they could simply travel from country to country buying a local micro sim and proceed without any problem. Not so. I say that having bought my 3G iPad at the US launch only to find I could not activate the sim without a US credit card. On querying Apple they advised the situation would be the same in the UK. There are some EU-wide micro sim cards being sold by retailers (according to the Apple Discussions forums) but they come at a hefty premium.

[Anonymous]

From what I have read, is it not possible to take a knife to a regular SIM to trim it down to 'micro SIM' size? You can easily buy SIM cards for cash in the UK, it seems, frankly, stupid that you can't do the same with micro SIMs.

I've bought US SIM cards on a UK credit card without a problem - the ipad / micro SIM restrictions almost seem artificial.

[Anonymous]

They are, Apple like to do this sort of thing.

[Anonymous]

Yet another reason why I wouldn't buy Apple...

In any case, for the OP, check out this post, which explains how to trim a normal SIM in order to fit the iPad.

http://www.johnbenson.net/How_to_Conver ... eaver.html