Email on board...

[All_at_Sea]

Looking to get email on board and l realise thast this subject must have come up alot before. I met a guy in Cadiz who reckoned on 1euro a day. Is this about right and who gives the best coverage for the med areas, Spain to Black Sea.
I have a laptop, so could add some sort of card - or should we do it through a mobile phone?? We realise we could stop and use internet cafes but we also want to have some onboard arrangement.

 

[captainslarty]

Where are you planning to sail / moor / anchor ?

 

[Grehan]

This is a big question, without an easy answer.
One answer, if you don't need to internet browse (you could do that in a cyber cafe), is PocketMail which 'dials up' using a mobile phone or landline phone (e.g a public phone box).
People I've spoken to say it's great, and cheap, for straightforward email type communications.
If you go with PocketMail you'd need either to 'roam' from a UK mobile network (eg Orange) or get a local country's network's SIM card, which is cheaper - or use a public phone when ashore.

http://www.pocketmail.com/us/products/howitworks/ <<How PocketMail works . . .

 

[Richard10002]

[ QUOTE ]
Looking to get email on board and l realise thast this subject must have come up alot before. I met a guy in Cadiz who reckoned on 1euro a day. Is this about right and who gives the best coverage for the med areas, Spain to Black Sea.
I have a laptop, so could add some sort of card - or should we do it through a mobile phone?? We realise we could stop and use internet cafes but we also want to have some onboard arrangement.

[/ QUOTE ]

As wifi is a bit sporadic - some places you can get it, others you cant, I always try and get a SIM card which allows cheap data.

In Spain I used Yoigo - get the sim from "The Phone House", (I'm sure there will be one in Cadiz, or nearby... there is definitely one in Rota as that's where I got mine from.

1.39 euro per day for GPRS only - I couldnt find a cheap PAYG 3G card.

In Italy, I use a TIM SIM and a WIND SIM. Withe TIM I use their 9Gb per month for 25 euros, (limited to 5pm -9am Mon-Fri plus all weekend), and WIND 5Gb per month anytime for 30 euros per month.

This forum is really helpful:

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/index.php

They can help with greece etc.

You need some means of reading the data... I use a data card in my PC, others use phones and PDAs.

I also have a wifi facility for when it's available.

Hope this helps

Richard

 

[captainslarty]

all good points.
Wifi is certainly patchy, but can be massively improved with external antennas.
In Coruna there is no wifi for the marina, we use a homemade cantenna with an amp on it fed by 10 mtrs of usb cable to a usb wifi adapter. The cable contains data buffers (basically a single port hub). We receive wif around 90 % of the time from a wifi hotspot around a quarter of a mile away.
The big trouble is rotating the antenna (A simple pole and duck tape used for now lol... and net stumbler for signal analysis.
Am looking at a commercial hi gain omni for the top of the mizzen, will see how that works, but for now this is good. In other places we have taped the ant to the pushpit or a stay and got great results, internet, skype and email.
/forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif

 

[Richard10002]

I have a 9Db outdoor antenna and a USB adapter which I run up the port flag halyard and get good results if there is an access point, but not if there isnt <g>

Didnt try it in Cartagena as only there for 1 night and somewhat tired, so just used Yoigo.

 

[charles_reed]

Several methodology:-

1. Satellite using Inmarsat III - about £3.5K for the kit and £5 a Mb, saves having to have an SSB on oceanic trips, so the capital is partly discounted.

2. Sailmail - for which you need an SSB and PactorIII, costs $99 per annum, but you have to fit the SSB - About £2.5K.

3. Cellular mobile - many phones double up as modems, 3G quite good but very sporadic coverage, 2.5G nearly as slow as SSB @ 9600kB. Best off with laptop card and special mast mounted antenna. I use a Nokia E70 and was paying the equivalent of £0.15 fro 15Mb in Croatia - use a PAYG local card for utmost economy - external aerial necessary unless in a centre of habitation.

4. In W Med, internet cafés are the cheapest - use your own laptop and search out those with an Ethernet LAN to the ADSL.

5. An increasing number of marinas are fitting Wi-Fi, but even Mimo-G routers only give about 200m coverage, that with an external pickup. Strangely the E70 is the most sensitive, but the minute screen makes websites particularly tedious.
One day the much-talked-about Wi-Max will finally make its debut and we'll all be able to use radio-PCs like we use mobiles.

Haven't tried push e-mail, though the phone will do that, (problems of an international portal) prefer to use old-fashioned texting which is about the cheapest and most reliable (UK text pricing is about the most expensive in Europe) at £0.02 - £0.10.

As suggested the prepaidgsm site is worth investigating though it's US needs oriented and totally non-marine. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[jeremyshaw]

There was a post in this forum on pre paid gsm a few days ago with some useful links. Worth checking out if you have not already.

 

[Richard10002]

[ QUOTE ]
As suggested the prepaidgsm site is worth investigating though it's US needs oriented and totally non-marine. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

Not sure I would agree - All of my european queries have been answered promptly and expertly. There is a strong european presence with some of the real experts being from Italy and other European countries. I think you'be hard pressed to find a European GSM service worth having that isnt identified there.

not sure marine is an issue ... on a boat, you either get the signal or you dont, and it's GPRS, 3G, or HSDPA, (or whatever it's called.... never experienced it yet). I've found nowhere on the European coast, (up to maybe 5 or 10 miles out), where I havent got a signal of some kind so far,and this includes small populations like Stromboli and Vulcano.

Dont want to be awkward/pedantic, but also dont want people to avoid an excellent resource because they might think it caters more for our friends from over the pond.

 

[Toutvabien]

If it is mainly text email that you are interested in then do consider a Sat Phone. We also have wi fi on the boat that we use when it is on offer, as it allows us to send large attachments that are not economic on a sat phone.

In order to be self reliant in out of the way places and remote anchorages then Iridium Sat Phone wired up to laptop or PC works well and, in the long term, is not too expensive. Our phone was second hand from eBay for £300 and 500 minutes airtime was another £370. To send and receive a reasonable number of emails using compression softwear, say 6 in and 6 out, takes about 2 minutes. Can send and receive anywhere, coverage so far has been excellent and the set up is reliable. Also have the phone as a back up to other communication systems, SSB and VHF radio, that we have on board.

We have now trained our friends and family to use the text email set up on the sat phone and it is working very well indeed. Means that we need to use the mobile phone only rarely.

 

[All_at_Sea]

Thanks everybody, a great help. l'll start my investigations now......

 

[shamrock]

Our solution is SSB/Pactor for offshore (Sailmail is actually $250 per year but even that's good value by my estimation). If you have or plan to get SSB then this is a very nice solution. We got weather grib files and a daily digest email from home each day whilst on passage, and sent out crew messages to family plus a blog entry.

One of my crew was keen to have a satphone for emergencies and rented one for the two week passage to the Canaries from the UK (cost £150). As I'd predicted, the SSB email was good enough and the satphone was never even turned on. If you can afford it as an extra / backup then OK but I won't be getting one again.

Here in the Canaries, every marina we've been in has had wi-fi either there or close by, and there are always unsecured networks somewhere to tap into, just sit on a bench in town with the laptop!

We have a 5m USB cable with a £10 USB wifi dongle on the end. That goes out the pilothouse window and up on a flag halyard and is currently reaching from the boat to the office on the other side - at least 500 yards.

Of course, all this is intermittent and dependent on finding wifi but for social purposes it's great. The phone has good connection too but is left off most of the time!

Nick