All this talk about iPhones made us forget the easy solution. Straight from Apple:
Verizon Wireless will offer three bundles, all featuring an iPad Wi-Fi model and a Verizon MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot, for a suggested retail price of $629.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 16GB + MiFi, $729.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 32GB + MiFi and $829.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 64GB + MiFi. Verizon Wireless is offering a monthly access plan to iPad customers of up to 1GB of data for just $20 a month.
In other words, there is no CDMA iPad yet. It’s hard to say who wanted this more. Apple surely wants to suck the air out of the holiday season for any upstart Android tablets—enough to agree to this duct-tape solution. At the same time, iPad sales figures—rumored to be bananas—have probably made Verizon anxious.
A Verizon iPad, especially in this configuration, also has fewer obstacles than a Verizon iPhone. I don’t think this strengthens any theory about iPhone timing. Nobody should be surprised that the two companies have been talking, though it is encouraging to see that they’ve agreed on something.