Internet aboard

[Dirkou]

Hi All

This is my first post to the forum!
I would like to ask what current solutions exist to have Internet aboard a small 40 ft boat. What are the brands, models and price. It is fast? What providers exist?

Tks a lot!

 

[roly_voya]

Hi welcome to the forum. There are lots of people who know more about this tham so will leave them to reply, in the mean time try some serches as this is a regular topic and there is lots of good stuff archived

 

[ccscott49]

welcome to the Forum.
If you are talking coastal, you are stuck with mobile phone connection, GPRS or wifi in marinas etc. Deep sea we are talking either sattelite or SSB with Pactor or similar.
Need to know where your talking about, to be able to advise.

 

[nickrj]

What you want is Inmarsat BGAN. It'll cost you an arm and a leg... I've seen it at 7quid/meg... But if a 40footer is small, then maybe cost isn't an issue-

n.

 

[LadyJessie]

As Englander says, there are lots of solutions. Let me give you some more details on the coastal solution in Europe: most of Europe and the Middle East part of the eastern Med is very well covered by the mobile phone networks. This often works well offshore as well. What you need to do is get a mobile connection with GPRS service. This is the data connection service in our normal talk. It will give you a very fast internet connection, faster than dial-up connections but slower than some broadband. It could be expensive, depending on which country/plan you are on but can also be as cheap as 10 euros a month for unlimited access. All depends on where you are, so cannot give you any more information without knowing what your sailing area is.

 

[Dirkou]

Hi there

Tks for all the replies. My sailing area is between Portugal and the Azores and I plan to do many trips from Lisbon to Madeira, Canaries, Cape Verde. So lots of ocean sailing. Satellite will be the best for me. Is it expensive? What is the ideal solution to have emails beinf checked all the time during navigation? (something like blackberry).

Tks!

 

[Troutbridge]

Internet access at sea is bl**dy expensive. Have a look at mailsail (not sailmail, which is SSB). Don't have the site address to hand, but I've just brought an Iridium phone with an email compression program. Not set up yet so I can't say how it will work, but 3000 minutes of airtime can be purchased for $2995 US, valid for two years. Internet browsing is still too expensive.

 

[nickrj]

Cheapest is skymate.com

Slow though, through the Iridium network, and just for email. I already mentioned Inmarsat BGAN, which you can type into google. Like this: http://www.google.com/search?q=bgan

And you get all your answers.

 

[Richard10002]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi there

Tks for all the replies. My sailing area is between Portugal and the Azores and I plan to do many trips from Lisbon to Madeira, Canaries, Cape Verde. So lots of ocean sailing. Satellite will be the best for me. Is it expensive? What is the ideal solution to have emails beinf checked all the time during navigation? (something like blackberry).

Tks!

[/ QUOTE ]

How important is it that you have access to email all of the time? and why?

The trips you intend to do will have you at sea for only 3 to 7 days, (or so), before you can either get to an internet cafe, access a wifi system, or access a mobile data system.

Personally, I try and have a mobile data solution for most of the places I visit, and live without web/email access for the times I am out of Range.

Whislt I dont know enough about it, it would seem that the SSB system, (whilst slow), is the most cost effective for 24/7 access, and is what I would look at, rather than satellite).