mobile internet connection

roam

roam

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we have been having conversations with other live-aboard cruisers regarding internet connection on the move and the subject of vodafone cards came up. one person claimed that another cruiser was using a vodafone card for less than 20 pounds per month for unlimited access to the internet in multiple eu countries.

can anyone provide info on this and if this is available? (my internet searches at expensive cyber cafes hasn't found what i think i'm looking for). it sounds too cheap to be true!

thanks in advance
 
Here is the link to Vodafone on the move. Note it says "View Price Plans" at the bottom

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/cgi-bin/COUK/p...gcegjdgnfdffn.0

If you can find their price plan then please post it here. Vodafone don't want you to know what it will cost you. (the answer is an arm and a leg!) Try going into one of their shops and asking - they won't know!

I use wifi hot spots; costs nothing
 
[ QUOTE ]
one person claimed that another cruiser was using a vodafone card for less than 20 pounds per month for unlimited access to the internet in multiple eu countries.


[/ QUOTE ]

I (and many others I suspect) would love to know how they arranged that !!!!
I suspect its totally untrue.
I have a Vodaphone 3G card which costs £53 a month for 1Gig of data tansfer and only within the uk. Although it will work in other countries the additional costs per Mb are high (£4 upwards).

I believe you can get a roaming contract that includes 100Mb a month other countries but I seem to remember the cost is around £100 per month.

There is a cheaper GPRS card available but its so slow its not worth it.
 
[ QUOTE ]
I have a Vodaphone 3G card

[/ QUOTE ] In what countries have you used this? My understanding is that 3G coverage abroad varies from nil to very little other than close to major centres. Is that still so, or has the situation improved?

[ QUOTE ]
There is a cheaper GPRS card available but its so slow its not worth it.

[/ QUOTE ] Hmmm! It depends upon what you want to use it for. For email, which is what most of us want onboard, GPRS can quite reasonably be described as fast. Can you justify this statement by personal use and, if so, for what purpose have you been using GPRS?
 
I havent used it abroad at all...I was merely conveying information about costs.

As far as GPRS is concerned, if you think its fast for email be my guest....it sucks. Again I have only used it in this country and only when oranges dismal 3G service dropped back to GPRS due to poor coverage.
 
I have the Vodafone 3G card in question on a Business Tarrif
The monthly rate is 100Mb roaming
I have used it on Vodafone Spain this summer and coverage on the Islands was very good, Fall back was GPRS and using onspeed to compress the data email and checking weather was fine.
SFR in France is also good
Roaming agreements are also availble with Vodafone Italy and Greece
So we find this a good option
Also use WiFi when I can.
Have installed an Antenna at the top of the Mast which is multi band which will work for Mobile Voice, Data and WiFi but then again this does allow me to work from the boat
 
Appears to be £10.28 per mb but...I find the itemised bill very difficult to decipher. Maybe that's Vodafone's general plan, or then again, maybe I'm just being cynical.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Have installed an Antenna at the top of the Mast which is multi band which will work for Mobile Voice, Data and WiFi but then again this does allow me to work from the boat

[/ QUOTE ]I'm very interested in this arrangement, it would be very useful. Could you post details and which network adapter the WiFi aerial is fed into, and how you split the GSM/GPRS from the WiFi signals? Or any details so that I can follow it up myself would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
B1,

Vodafone have now given me unlimited data access on my 3G business tariff for the same price you are paying for a Gig. I didn't ask for it, just got a letter from them saying "As a valued customer, etc.... Again, only for use in the UK.

Might be worth an ask?
 
I use contract Mobile Connect 75. For £23.50 inc vat I get 75mega bytes of data per month on GPRS its dreadfully slow but the nearest internet cafe is 10 miles away. Earlier this year I was on a different contract i think it was called Mobile Connect 30 and cost about £30. Yes I know, the figures dont make sense. But last year I paid £1 per megabyte and this year I pay 30p per megabyte. Got to your friendly! Vodafone store and ask to change contracts.
Good Luck
 
We found O2 GPRS in the UK very slow and pricey. However, when we used it in Guernsey it was diabolically expensive!! I think we may have used it in France until we found out how expensive it was.

We were using this though a bluetooth connection to our normal mobile phone, rather than a card, but I believe this was just as efficient as a card.

In Spain we bought a local PAYG Sim card. This worked well, but failed to get GPRS going as my Spanish lingo was too weak to explain what I wanted. Instead we started to use Gonuts4free, then in Portugal swapped to Budget dial up. This works effectively, if slowly (but faster than GPRS!).

Finally we got an economical WIFi link at Lagos for the winter. (Franco). This gave us unlimited connectivity and enabled us to listen to UK radio stations to our heart's content.

WiFi is the future, provided operators price it realistically and not at £50 or 50 euros a month.
 
Hi Terry
Glad to see you're still in the sun. I gave up with my Vodafone Datacard as it was costing me a fortune. Despite them saying it was only £4 per Mb, SFR was adding roaming charges as well, making it more like £10 for 5 mins!. I have just spoken to someone on the Spanish coast who swears by WiFi and Skype. Problem was we only found one marina in France with WiFi! But apparently most marinas in S Spain have it, so maybe you should try Skype.
Happy sailing.
Duncan (S/Y Olivia)
 
Wifi

This is definitely the way to go if you are travelling around Europe. We have found unsecured connections all over, never any problems about getting a free service on my lap-top. Only a few times on the boat though. Here in Funchal, Maderia is one of them - choice of three can be picked up in the harbour!

Where we can't get wifi we use an international ISP, Tempest Telecom, together with our mobile phone, buying local sim cards. The combined cost (phone + ISP charge) tends to be around 15p per minute, runs only at 9.6Kbps, not cheap but still useful for vital e-mails.
 
I have a data only package with vodafone used only in my PDA which costs around 20pounds per months.

This post is being written on it right now!!

When you go into a vodofone shop, speak to the manager and get them to call their billing people if they do not know about this. This is what I had to do.

Forget surfing the net with it, although you can switch to text only downloads which speeds things up considerably.

It does the job for email and yes it is set to international roaming.

I don't have the specific details of the package but I will get them off my wife the next time I am home and post them here.

As a side note, I am working on a system that will use this to allow low packet emails to be sent and recieved via GPRS - either by phone or PDA. I am keen to find out before going to far though, who and what people would expect to pay for this. I wish it could be for free, but this is what I do, and I need to pay for my boat somehow /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
I would be very interested in this as well. I have a phone antenna on top of my mast, plus a 15db, wifi antenna on the roof of the wheelhouse, which I was going to put on the top of the mast, but if an all singing and danciing antenna is avaialbe, then I would go for that.
The main problem with antennas on the top of masts, is the losses in the coax cable, luckily have a very thick low loss cable run up my mast, with a "tail" inside the boat. How do you connect an antenna to your mobile handset?
Also wifi is 2.4Ghz and phone 900 Mhz, I think, anyway, any chance of having a more powerful wifi transmitter, they are very low powered, legally.?
 
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