According to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, iPad will be a Wi-Fi driven product. “My expectation is that there’s not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription,” he said.

It makes sense; people who already have an iPhone subscription may be unlikely to go for another subscription, especially since it’s not crucial to the iPad experience, which comes in both Wi-Fi and 3G flavors.

But, have you ever actually tried to do some meaningful work (or even casual browsing) using only a Wi-Fi connection when you’re on the move? Often, you’ll find many Wi-Fi connections available, but they’re all password-protected. When you find one, you’re not very mobile anymore: sit on a tram, bus, or a subway, and your Wi-Fi is lost, then you have to search for another one. Finally, open Wi-Fi connections are often unsafe, and many users won’t dare access or send sensitive data over them.

Being able to fall back to a 3G connection improves your mobile Internet experience tremendously, and the logical question (that no one answered yet) is this: Will iPad users will be able to tether 3G connection from the iPhone? After all, if you’re paying for a 3G iPhone subscription, shouldn’t you be able to use that connection on another device (bought from the same carrier and the same manufacturer)?

Apple has so far been silent about tethering on the iPad, but it’s a question that needs to be answered, perhaps even before iPad hits the market.

Tags: 3g, att, ipad, iphone, Tethering

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