help with mobile internet

[n8rbos]

hi all, i'm looking to get a laptop for overseas use mainly europe, told today that roaming charges are around £3.50 a mb! is this right?how do all yourselves get on?and what service providers do you use?


thanx

I've just bought a vodafone dongle and roaming outside the UK is not allowed! Would it not be cheaper to buy a dongle abroad? But I guess not if touring around a lot.

[n8rbos]

thanx paul but i honestly know nowt about abroad and internet, i had a desktop and broadband lol

[AndyC]

Originally Posted by n8rbos

hi all, i'm looking to get a laptop for overseas use mainly europe, told today that roaming charges are around £3.50 a mb! is this right?how do all yourselves get on?and what service providers do you use?


thanx

It's a big problem if you do a lot of travelling, I think the best deal at the moment if you need a reasonable amount internet use is a Vodafone pay monthly 1GB, 3GB or 5GB plan. The cost is £9.99/24 hours for up to 50Mb
See: Internet access abroad and international roaming charges ? Vodafone

For occasional use picking up email in Europe I use a T-Mobile standard PAYG sim in an unlocked USB modem, that costs me £1.50/Mb
See: Mobile Internet Abroad - Mobile Phones Abroad - T-Mobile

If staying in one country for a long time it is sometimes worth checking out the cost of buying a local 3G sim or usb modem. Last winter we were in Morocco and I got a local 3G PAYG sim card which gave unlimited usage for about £16/month

AndyC

[Roger]

Do a Google on free wifi in the countries you will visit - we found plenty of places that you could access (someone else's internet??). Also try Googling "wardriving" which is the geeks name for locating and giving GPS coords for wifi access - often in or around large factories or offices with unsecured access.

McDonald's provided free wifi in Scandanavia when we were there in 2007, often in the car park. I think that's been expanded to most of Europe now. About a 50Mb limit per session.

Some cities in Norway had free wifi across the whole city - Tromso I think was one.

You can also download programmes like "network stumbler" that have a nosy around wifi connections and discover the appropriate details to enable you to log in. All very illegal.

I had a little plug in wifi card that worked as long as we were really close to the wifi source. I now have a USB wifi stick with a 3 metre cable extension that I can poke outside the window and hey presto it works very well.

If you want to stay totally legal and have very high speed internet then the likes of Inmarsat have deals using the marine satellite systems. No hunting wifi, just open the dish and wait for 3 green lights. Not cheap though.

[channa]

I can vouch for France, that Mac Donalds and Campanile hotels offe rfree wi fi.

A lot of tourist information centres too ,,,,some are wi fi some hard wired ...and great fun ( not ) working a french keyboard!!.

All part of the fun tho

Channa

Originally Posted by Roger

Do a Google on free wifi in the countries you will visit - we found plenty of places that you could access (someone else's internet??).

Careful this is illegal, a few months ago in this country some people where caught sitting outside a house doing this! And abroad it may be very serious in certain countries.

[petercheason]

Originally Posted by channa

I can vouch for France, that Mac Donalds and Campanile hotels offe rfree wi fi.

A lot of tourist information centres too ,,,,some are wi fi some hard wired ...and great fun ( not ) working a french keyboard!!.

All part of the fun tho

Channa

I agree with you Channa all the Tourist info centres in France have cheao access at about 1 euro for a half hour but they use their own keyboard as you say.They also tend to use applemac and I got very frustrated ,being a windows xp man, on grappling with both keyboard and different system. However I am away most weeks throughout the Uk and find my 3 dongle works a treat and the young man from 3 said it works abroad ok at about a £1 a Mgb , however if you are only reading and surfing its as cheap as chips .

My recently bought PAYG Vodafone dongle does not work abroad, according to the instructions, but perhaps there is a hack for it?

[AndyC]

Originally Posted by petercheason

the young man from 3 said it works abroad ok at about a £1 a Mgb , however if you are only reading and surfing its as cheap as chips .

£1/Mb is quite good for roaming data, however the Three website quotes £3/Mb for most of Europe... Can you get more details of the £1/Mb deal?

AndyC