[jeffgrant]

I got a local pay-as-you-go micro-sim card in Scotland a few months ago, and it was 15 pounds for 2 GIGs. After 2 weeks of lots of surfing (but not a lot of downloaded video or anything), I barely used 300MB.

I generally pre-load the iPad with any movies/tv shows I want to watch before I travel, and do heavy streaming only when on wi-fi.

I also use Air Video to stream from my local server to the iPad locally, and it will also convert video for storage on the iPad.