Being Connected

This is the second post about how we cope with life on the road. Today we are going to talk about being connected.

Going through the vast amount of phone and internet plans available can be a daunting task and, most of the times, choosing the suitable plan what works for you is a matter of research.

Before we set off, I did some research with some advice and tips from people who had done this kind of trip before. Our tours and Europe by Camper were particularly informative. Two things seemed to come up regularly. One is the Eurosim card which at €3 per day seemed good value, however this was discontinued shortly before we left. How typical is that! The other was a Wi-Fi amplifier. This we were sceptical about, mainly because, in our experience most Wi-Fi networks are protected. In the UK it is illegal to use other peoples Wi-Fi connections without their permission and we were unaware of the legalities of doing this in other countries. The equipment also seemed quite expensive. We therefore discounted this as an option.

Before choosing any plans, we tried to imagine how we be using internet. As we will be out all day as long as the weather allows, we may be using internet for a short while in the morning and a couple of hours or so in the evening, primarily to surf the internet for planning the route on a daily basis, looking for things to do and updating the blog. For downloading big files such as podcasts, we would be going to cafes where they have free Wi-Fi.

When looking at plans abroad, we were at a slight advantage and took advantage of Susana’s brother Roberto, to investigate what is available in Spain. From this information, and the fact that the Eurosim card was no longer available, we concluded that separate pay as you go sims or short term contracts would be the best way to go. The closest to the Eurosim  deal was at Carrefour;

http://www.carrefour.es/telecom/internet-movil-prepago/tarifa-diaria/

• 1,21€ per day VAT included
• 100 MB
• 3,63€ minimum per month (three days)

In Spain a typical package would be €7 for a sim card and €7 per month for 3GB per month.This was with Mobistar, but several others did similar contracts.. We had a look around several other countries and concluded that they would be of similar costs.

Mi-Fi device

But how were we going to access all this online data? We both had laptops and iphones and we also have an ipad. Before we moved to our new house in Ebbsfleet we rented for a short time while it was being completed. We did not want a telephone line and therefore resorted to a Mi-Fi device which worked really well and allowed us to create a local Wi-Fi using the mobile phone network and therefore we could get online with our laptops connecting wirelessly to this. This would seem to work well while abroad.

We eventually opted for a Huawei E5776s-32 which has the potential to connect to a 4G network, we will let you know whether this is a benefit or not, so far we have only been able to access 3G, or in Cornwall 0.5G! We purchased this second hand off of ebay for £53.69 which included postage and packaging; however it was locked to the EE (orange) network, so we had to spend an extra 0.99p on ebay for an unlocking code. It costs £93.59 on Amazon, last time I looked. The unlock code worked fine, but it did take a couple of hours trying to update the Mi-Fi software so that it wasn’t always referring back to the EE website. The following website was very helpful for this;

http://willtaylor.org/update-e5776-firmware/

Thanks Will.

Mobile phones

Both of us had mobile phone contracts but did not want to pay the monthly fees while were out of the country, although we did want to keep our numbers.

We therefore looked for UK pay as you go sim cards that we could top up online easily and were good value for money. We intend using these for emergencies only, generally keeping in contact with people via email or WhatsApp. We also wanted a mainstream network provider, preferable 4G. We opted for three, which at 3p per minute, 2p per text and 1p per MB seems really good value. They also allow you to use your sim in 16 other countries with their “Feel at Home”. These include;

Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Macau, Norway, Ireland, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland and the US of A.

We also enquired about a SIM card for the Mi-Fi device and for £15 per month could get 10GB worth of data. This we thought would be ample for the five to six weeks in the UK and the three to four weeks in France using “Feel at Home”. Whereas tethering in a mobile is not allowed using “Feel at Home” we were told it is OK in the Mi-Fi device when abroad, but we will be rechecking this.

Data usage

So where have we got to so far on data usage? It has been much higher than we had anticipated, firstly because we have not been cautious and have not been using, until recently, Wi-Fi cafes. We used the 10Gb within three weeks. Only a week ago, we got messages from our internet provider warning us we were reaching our data allowance and that once we had, the rate applicable for additional data would £0.10 per MB. Four days ago, we reached our quota in the middle of updating the blog. Once we finished publishing the post, we had spent £25. This is not that surprising since they send all alerts to the MI-Fi device as texts, which you have to retrieve via the laptop. The Mi-Fi does not beep or vibrate like a mobile.

Because we have used up our maximum allowance before the end of the month, we have to wait until the 17^th of September to renew it. Steep learning curve on that one. Next month they have found a better tariff at £15.99 for 15GB, it is amazing how these miraculously appear, shame we didn’t have that last month! However on closer inspection we have found while doing this the one thing they did not care to mention was this was a 24 month contract rather than the one month contract I was on previously, so we will be promptly moving back! We have not been completely cut off. Our phones still have 90MB data allowance but we only use them for emergencies and they cannot be tethered (used to create a local Wi-Fi off of the mobile). In four days’ time we will be back to our 10GB so will become easier.

Cafes

So far we have used Costa Coffee and MacDonald’s. Costa limits you to one hour and is fairly slow, MacDonald’s is much quicker and with no time limit, except the hardness of the chairs and unpleasantness of the décor!

Might be spending a lot of time here in the future.

Spain

For Spain, where we will spend quite a bit of time, we will use our Spanish phone with our local number.

In conclusion

We need to be more observant and careful on how we use internet, but this has been a good learning curve before Europe, where the language is bound to make it even more confusing. We are not using the ipad, so wished we had left it at home. An antennae may have been a good investment for the Mi-Fi to extends its mobile reach a little, as we have found quite a few spots where we have had no signal.

GR