Internet Access on board in Europe

[LadyEmma]

Hello,
First posting here, but have been lurking and reading & everyone seems very helpful, so I'm hoping you can help me.

We plan to liveaboard from next spring, cruising the inland waterways of the Netherlands, Belgium and France and maybe wintering somewhere warmer - Greece/Turkey maybe.

Anyway, we're trying to sort out stuff now, and I can't workout how to get internet access aboard. Do you rely on wifi provided in marinas? Is it expensive? Much free wifi about? Are dongles bought in each country the way to go?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[RobbieW]

Hello,
First posting here, but have been lurking and reading & everyone seems very helpful, so I'm hoping you can help me.

We plan to liveaboard from next spring, cruising the inland waterways of the Netherlands, Belgium and France and maybe wintering somewhere warmer - Greece/Turkey maybe.

Anyway, we're trying to sort out stuff now, and I can't workout how to get internet access aboard. Do you rely on wifi provided in marinas? Is it expensive? Much free wifi about? Are dongles bought in each country the way to go?

Thanks in advance for your help!

We've been finding less and less free WiFi about. Travelled along Southern Brittany, NW Spain and now down the coast of Portugal having left the UK in mid July. We have a mobile router on board into which you plug a SIM card and it provides a private WiFi service for the boat. The SIM I bought from SFR in France never worked, the one from MASMovil in Spain worked well but I'd have been better off with the Yoigo SIM as I believe we use 3-5Gb a month with two laptops & one avid facebook fan who also has all her mail online. Currently with a Vodafone SIM in Portugal which is €10/720Mb and seems to be working well so far. This solution has the advantage that it works up to about 10Nm offshore and in anchorages.

I cant remember where I read it but you can get a wireless router that you plug a dongle into - these are relatively cheap and support 4-5 devices. Apparently you can also set an iPhone up as a local hot spot - not having one I've not tried that.

Its also worth having one of the high power WiFi adapters on board to get the best out of any service you can find - we now only download TV content when attached to WiFi. The Alfa chips have a good reputation coupled to an external high gain aerial.

 

[Oliveoyl]

Have just bought an android phone (HTC), which is tethered to Samsung netbook, so acts like a dongle. Have only tested it so far with Belgian SIM, but planning to get prepaid Greek SIM in Athens this weekend, €40 5gb / month. Was unsure about domestic internet usage, so have recently installed Netmeter, which confirms that parental use of internet is well within capacity of the card (it's our son who sends the counter through the ceiling!)

 

[KellysEye]

We used a high gain antenna in the Med and Caribbean. In the Med we found wifi services patchy. Be very careful with free wifi it's unsecured and many are now full of nasties. If you have a high gain antenna you will probably find paid for wifi which is worth doing. They always have a sign up page with card details required.

 

[LadyEmma]

Hi and thanks for the replies, I'll investigate what you've all suggested over the weekend I let you know what I discover.

I think I'm spoilt by all the free wifi that's available in the UK, I was really suprised that there was next to none in Portugal earlier in the year. I ended up walking up & down a residential street until I found an unsecured network to log on to!

 

[mikewilkes]

WiFi

If you know somebody in UK who uses BT then investigate BT Fon.
We have a booster antenna and we log onto Fon when we are in France.
.

 

[LadyEmma]

If you know somebody in UK who uses BT then investigate BT Fon.
We have a booster antenna and we log onto Fon when we are in France.
.

Hello Mike,
This might be a really daft question, but how does knowing someone in the UK who has their interenet access via BT enable me to go onto FON when I' abroad?

 

[duncan99210]

The best way to more or less guarantee access is by 3G dongle. Cheapest route would appear to be buy an unlocked dongle and then the local SIM on prepaid access. Most countries you need your passport to buy the SIM; in Greece you will also need a letter from a marina stating you are staying there! Wifi is available in places but it is patchy and often more expensive than 3G! Hope that helps.

 

[lurob]

The best way to more or less guarantee access is by 3G dongle. Cheapest route would appear to be buy an unlocked dongle and then the local SIM on prepaid access. Most countries you need your passport to buy the SIM; in Greece you will also need a letter from a marina stating you are staying there! Wifi is available in places but it is patchy and often more expensive than 3G! Hope that helps.

I agree entirely with duncan99210. We've had an unlocked dongle that we've used over the past 3 years in Spain, Portugal & now, Greece. Re required letter from marina to get SIM - we were only in Gouvia Marina for 2 nights but that was sufficient to get the necessary letter for a contract with Vodafone.

 

[Matelot Joe]

Hi, Look at what a kindle 3G can do ! Google search all day long at no cost, I am told that email is also possible on it. yes, the keys are bit of a faff but its free !
Cheers

 

[Blue5]

Hello Mike,
This might be a really daft question, but how does knowing someone in the UK who has their interenet access via BT enable me to go onto FON when I' abroad?

I guess the answer is If they have FON enabled you can use their username and password as with a BT a/c you can get free access to FON abroad

 

[Oliveoyl]

Prepaid/postpaid

The best way to more or less guarantee access is by 3G dongle. Cheapest route would appear to be buy an unlocked dongle and then the local SIM on prepaid access. Most countries you need your passport to buy the SIM; in Greece you will also need a letter from a marina stating you are staying there! Wifi is available in places but it is patchy and often more expensive than 3G! Hope that helps.

As I understand it, a prepaid SIM in Greece is easily bought, postpaid more complicated (have heard stories about needing not only (marina) adress but also tax number to get an annual contract.
Big advantage of the smartphone is that it can capture wifi when available, and use the SIM when there's no wifi

 

[mikewilkes]

Sorry for delay

I guess the answer is If they have FON enabled you can use their username and password as with a BT a/c you can get free access to FON abroad

If you are a BT internet customer you are now - since I think 2008 - automatically a Fon member. All you need is your log in details to access anywhere worldwide. They have a shed load of connections available. France is SFR Fon or Neuf Fon.

So all you need is a friendly BT customer.

There used to be a 250 mins per month limit but have never been bothered about that.

Enjoy your time.

.

 

[RobbieW]

... Be very careful with free wifi it's unsecured and many are now full of nasties...

One way to secure your connection is to sign up to a VPN service. ActiveCaptain, see https://activecaptain.com/newsletters/2011-01-05.php, did a survey about 12 months ago and came up with some recommendations. We have a subscription to Astrill as a result.

To view BBC TV content you are supposed to be in the UK, a VPN service with a UK endpoint will make it appear that you are. One gotcha with VPN providers generally is that many only secure port 80, HTTP, traffic. When you download BBC TV content to playback in Windows Media Player, media player has to download usage rights before it will play the file and it does not use port 80 for this. You need a VPN supplier that secures all your IP traffic.

VPN is kind of an encrypted tube between your PC and the VPN suppliers server which makes it harder for a casual snooper to read your traffic on an open WiFi service. This is apparently straightforward if you know how.

 

[charles_reed]

Here in Greece free wi-fi is readily available in most marinas, ports and cafés.

IMHO reliance on free-wi-fi is OK for those who want a weekly catch-up on e-mail and are prepared to pay the opportunity-cost. In the W Med there is little if any free and prices are astronomical for public access.

Since 2007, I've relied entirely on cellular data connection, usually with a PAYG SIM.

France - Bouygues; €20/1Gb
Italy - TIM; €20/5hrs (great on G3 but a rip-off on GPRS)
Greece - WIND and Vodafone on contract. €0/5Gb/month and €30/5Gb/month

Prices, which are gradually diminishing are highly temporary and frequently not on general release so you have to research thoroughly when you arrive in a country. A "universal" SIM will not be the cheapest, but it's most convenient for transnational voyagers who only spend a few days in a country. Anything is cheaper than roaming on a UK SIM, for voice or for data.

There is a website doing a comparison on voice SIMs, which address I cannot remember - but it's usually out-of-date for data.

 

[gavin_lacey]

If you have a smartphone with vodaphone uk then you can gety a european data roaming package 25mb per day for £10 per month. Have used it in greece to get emails, forecasts, look up prices for parts etc etc. Never used more than 5mb in a day. I dont download music or video but the phone seems to use much less for downloading emails for example. All other uk networks seem to charge a fortune for roaming. I believe vodaphone also do a new roaming package for dongles at very good price.