Did you try to connect through a differ ant wifi device to see if your getting a good signal and also check the security settings and most likely your going to have to be rooted for wifi feather to work if you don't have it on your data plan
No I meant try running a differant wifi device a tablet laptop off your phones hotspot and see if only the I pad or if the hot spot works at all if it connects to a differant device then its an iPad issue if not its a phone issue most phones you got to have root permissions to activate it because unless you got teathering in your plan the carrier cooks in a killed switch for the rom so you need root to over ride it