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One of the best parts of the whole iPad deal is the 3G internet connection. Fifteen bucks will buy you as much bandwidth as you can use in a month, with no contracts and no lock-in. The downside is that you pay the full price up front.

According to iPhone blog TamsIJungle, Hutchison Telecom (trading as “3″) in Austria will be going the old-fashioned route, selling the iPad at a steep discount if you sign up for a two year contract. In an interview Berthold Thoma, the CEO of Hutchison Austria, told TamsIJungle that customers could get €333 ($454) off the list price in exchange for the €30-per-month ($41) lock-in.

This itself seems fairly reasonable, but things quickly get weird. You will be signing up for 3’s laptop bundle, and you will get the same mobile Huawei i-Mo 3G modem that a notebook user would get. This router, like the Mi-Fi, would share the internet signal and you’d connect with the iPad via Wi-Fi. This is absurd.

The whole point of the 3G iPad is that it is easy to connect whenever you like. If you’re going to give this thing to your mother, do you want to explain that she has to fire up a dongle every time she wants internet? Hey, Herr Thoma, what say you also bolt on a keyboard, throw in some anti-virus software and somehow reduce the battery life to just a few hours? Then the iPad could be just like a laptop, and your old-fashioned business model could remain intact forever.

Hutchison Austria will sell the iPad [TamsIJungle via TUAW]

Photo illustration: factoryjoe/Flickr

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