Hmm, now you have me thinking, as I am a Sprint customer and love their service. Verizon seems to get all of the praise for the fastest networks but time and time again my 3G service is leaps and bounds ahead of my friends and family members on AT&T and Verizon.
I tether my 3G HTC Hero to my Netbook all the time and enjoy a pretty smooth browsing experience, and the thought of AT&T and Apple throttling 3G playback really gives me pause. I am currently on the waiting list for a 3G iPad but just may have to give the Wi-Fi a whirl.
I digress. I don't want to have a contract and pay a monthly fee for a service I won't use all that much, so AT&T's month-to-month service for the iPad would be ideal. I guess I'll just wait and see if I can find away to get around the bandwidth throttling before I make a decision.
It's good to know that there are options out there.