3G dongles for iPads in Greece. A cheaper solution?

[Bertramdriver]

Ok one for the IT literati. I have an iPad 3 but no 3G. I use the free wifi internet in port to down load films but it takes ages and these days we seem to spend more time away from "civilisation". I have often wondered if it's possible to buy a local Greek 3G dongle to get internet access, as using my iPhone as a hot spot and O2 English provider is cripplingly expensive.
So for those who know.
Are down load costs cheaper in Greece than the UK?
is there a dongle available to interface with the iPod 3?
How do I make it all work?

 

[telford_mike]

In Switzerland I use a little device called a "MiFi" to access the internet on my ipad. It looks like a small mobile phone and I put a local pay & go SIM card in it. It becomes a wifi hotspot, and it will provide internet access for up to 5 devices at once. This would work well on a boat, it would just be a question of getting hold of a local SIM card. The MiFi device cost about £40 from eBay I think.

 

[Davy_S]

Cosmote do a dongle for 20 euro a month, you get 5 gig of internet access, the Germalatos (spelling) shops sell them.
I have used one and it was quite good, but I am a knob when it comes to electrickery things, sorry.

 

[NornaBiron]

We've been using a 'mifi' from Wind for the last year with an annual contract, €24.90 for 30Gb monthly. The mifi was free with the contract but I think they sell them and do payg deals. The coverage has been excellent almost everywhere we've been in the Aegean.

 

[duncan99210]

Mifi devices are readily available either in UK or Greece at about the same cost £30 - 40. Then get a local data sim and you have a 3G device that will make its own little wifi hotspot just about anywhere on the Greek coast. Data costs vary from €40 for 4 gb over a month from Vodafone pay as you go to the various deal on contract with Wind or other providers.

To get a contract you will probably need a tax number, which is obtained by visiting the local tax office with your passport: they give you a letter with the number on it, take that and your passport to the mobile phone provider and you can then set up a contract: we pay using a UK credit card and keep the contract running year round, even when we're in UK for the simplicity of not having to reopen the contract....

 

[sailaboutvic]

When we was in Messilonghi two years ago people was getting contacts with Vodafone just by using the marina address and showing their winter contact , no one was ask for a tax number ,
We found it easier to have a monthly pay as you go , it wasn't much more .

 

[nimbusgb]

Mifi devices are readily available either in UK or Greece at about the same cost £30 - 40. Then get a local data sim and you have a 3G device that will make its own little wifi hotspot just about anywhere on the Greek coast. Data costs vary from €40 for 4 gb over a month from Vodafone pay as you go to the various deal on contract with Wind or other providers.

To get a contract you will probably need a tax number, which is obtained by visiting the local tax office with your passport: they give you a letter with the number on it, take that and your passport to the mobile phone provider and you can then set up a contract: we pay using a UK credit card and keep the contract running year round, even when we're in UK for the simplicity of not having to reopen the contract....

€40 for 4g Wow that's about 1 1/2 movies!

Cosmote and wind can both do better. Much better.

 

[Cardo]

We pay €25/month for 20GB with Cosmote on an 18 month contract. This was a special offer at the time, I think it's €35/month now?

€25/month for 30GB is a steal, I didn't see anything like that from Wind when we got our contract a few months back! The Cosmote deal was the best going at the time.

 

[Davy_S]

A bit of an afterthought here, we have two Greek phones PAYG on Kefalonia (cannot speak for anywhere else) cosmote OTENET.gr gives a far better signal that Vodaphone or wind (wind is rubbish) we stand side by side and cosmote will always give a better signal than the rest. We have compared it with friends phone signal, all have dumped wind. of course it depends on where you are. Try before you buy!

 

[NornaBiron]

A bit of an afterthought here, we have two Greek phones PAYG on Kefalonia (cannot speak for anywhere else) cosmote OTENET.gr gives a far better signal that Vodaphone or wind (wind is rubbish) we stand side by side and cosmote will always give a better signal than the rest. We have compared it with friends phone signal, all have dumped wind. of course it depends on where you are. Try before you buy!

The advantage of having the mifi is that if the signal is poor you can hoist it up the mast. This almost always improves our signal. I agree that cosmote does have better coverage, though not enough to make us change from our great wind deal!

 

[Davy_S]

fairy nuff!

 

[sailinglegend420]

If you travel to Turkey you will pay a tax to put your data dongle into a uk unlocked MIFI!

Our solution was an unlocked Uk TP Link MIFI that accepts data dongles - we have ones for each country we have been to, including the UK. So your local data dongle with a local sim will just plug into the MIFI.

 

[Chris_Robb]

Ok one for the IT literati. I have an iPad 3 but no 3G. I use the free wifi internet in port to down load films but it takes ages and these days we seem to spend more time away from "civilisation". I have often wondered if it's possible to buy a local Greek 3G dongle to get internet access, as using my iPhone as a hot spot and O2 English provider is cripplingly expensive.
So for those who know.
Are down load costs cheaper in Greece than the UK?
is there a dongle available to interface with the iPod 3?
How do I make it all work?

Ah - so you're the guy who is hogging all the bandwidth in the local tabernas!

 

[tedgorton]

I bought an unlocked Huawei mifi dongle on eBay and a Cosmote data SIM from a Germanos shop. Topup vouchers can be bought from any peripteros (kiosk), 40 EUR gets you 30 days and 5GB. Been doing this for 3 years now, works like a charm even quite far from land; but there are blank coverage patches here and there.

Just bought a new 3G/4G E5776 dongle from Amazon (£99), not that there will be 4G I the Ionian, but it has a LONG battery life and you can connect up to 10 users.

Only downside is I use my boat's name for the wifi ID and we get all kinds of visits from neighbours asking to log on. Sadly, the answer has to be "no" as there is a 5GB data use limit and it usually lasts about the 3-4 weeks we are there at a time.

 

[charles_reed]

In Switzerland I use a little device called a "MiFi" to access the internet on my ipad. It looks like a small mobile phone and I put a local pay & go SIM card in it. It becomes a wifi hotspot, and it will provide internet access for up to 5 devices at once. This would work well on a boat, it would just be a question of getting hold of a local SIM card. The MiFi device cost about £40 from eBay I think.

Just about any smartphone will do the same job - my elderly i9300 Samsung will do it either on AndroidNFC or wi-fi.

The bigger problem is getting an adequate price from the ISPs, I understand that WIND are offering 3Gb for €15/month - a fact I've used to get Vodafone to offer me 5Gb for the same price.
You'll have to do it on contract, probably not on PAYG.

 

[charles_reed]

Cosmote do a dongle for 20 euro a month, you get 5 gig of internet access, the Germalatos (spelling) shops sell them.
I have used one and it was quite good, but I am a knob when it comes to electrickery things, sorry.

Germanos - don't you have to shell out for the USB receiver as an additional cost?

 

[charles_reed]

Data costs vary from €40 for 4 gb over a month from Vodafone pay as you go to the various deal on contract with Wind or other providers.

To get a contract you will probably need a tax number, which is obtained by visiting the local tax office with your passport: they give you a letter with the number on it, take that and your passport to the mobile phone provider and you can then set up a contract: we pay using a UK credit card and keep the contract running year round, even when we're in UK for the simplicity of not having to reopen the contract....

Competition is a marvellous thing - as already said the current costs/Mb are well under those you've quoted

One certainly doesn't need a tax #, though a good credit card ac is useful and a "permanent" address. A long-term >month marina contract suffices. It's the fault of the credit control dept.

 

[DaveRo]

The bigger problem is getting an adequate price from the ISPs, I understand that WIND are offering 3Gb for €15/month - a fact I've used to get Vodafone to offer me 5Gb for the same price.
You'll have to do it on contract, probably not on PAYG.

On PAYG, I think the best you can get is 500MB for €5 - both Cosmo and Wind.

 

[tedgorton]

Cosmote website now offers several PAYG options: http://www.cosmote.com/cosmoportal/p..._prs/loc/en_US for mobile broadband. If you get the USB stick it comes with a SIM you can use in an unlocked or SIM-free mifi dongle like I do. Tethering a mobile phone is an inferior option in my opinion.

 

[duncan99210]

Competition is a marvellous thing - as already said the current costs/Mb are well under those you've quoted

One certainly doesn't need a tax #, though a good credit card ac is useful and a "permanent" address. A long-term >month marina contract suffices. It's the fault of the credit control dept.

Once upon a time, you only needed a credit card, passport and letter from the marina to get a contract. Wind (or at least the Wind shop we dealt with in Ag Nik) now require a tax number as well as the other stuff. We have a contract with the. Now for 20 gb per month at a cost of €19 a month. We also have a mifi brick which cost us €35.

The PAYG option with vodafone is expensive but quick to sort out as it doesn't require anything beyond cash and a passport.