Technology problem.

[Kerouac]

I work via an Internet connection that lets me work from anywhere in the world. Maybe except a boat! Which is the one place I need it.

In the near future I'll be buying a liveaboard and cruising (see my other post).

My question is. Does anyone here have internet connection from their boat, not including either shore power or a land telephone line.

Ta

Tony

 

[[2574]]

Yes we have wireless "SquareMile" in the marina giving an excellent, reliable, high capacity (2mb) internet access.

rob

 

[Steve Clayton]

My question is. Does anyone here have internet connection from their boat, Yes, many providers; GPRS and wi-fi being examples. On the Spanish med coastline then WLAN operate a service in a number of marinas

not including either shore power yes, dc/ac inverter or DC/DC voltage changer

or a land telephone line.GPRS, wi-fi as above

 

[stevesales]

wifi is fine but there seems no alternative to horrendously expensive satellite links when seriously at sea.
Anyone have other views ?

 

[davecorvette]

Hi we have the vodafone data card as in may PBO on a 12 month contract at £30+vat 200Mgs per month download we have come down the coast from the n-east in lowestoft at present always been able to get a connection so far so good we are going through france to the med and winter in the south close to nice

 

[noswad175]

I've recently signed up for an 8Mb broadband connection for my home through http://www.lasmit.com, but have been told there is a broadband ISP that offers a service for both home and mobile connections within the same account. Does anyone know which ISP this is? Please do let me know if you have this service on your boat.

Thanks,
Steve

 

[ashley]

Orange in France offer a wifi/gprs package
http://www.orange-wifi.com/offre_abW.htm]

 

[ashley]

Also, if you do not need to surf the internet but are happy with email, voice "messaging" and fax, you could try skymate which is much cheaper than satellite phone and SSB options

It will also update a website daily showing your world location to friends/family/boat operator if required

 

[mirabriani]

When on passage from St Maarten to Bermuda with another forumite, we had e mail available onboard.
I believe it is expensive to set up (sailmail) It also seems to take longer to send as the operator has to find a radio station through which to route it. For instance, initially it had to go via Panama and only later could we use Florida.
The downside is that sometimes the operator cannot communicate with the outside world due to inability to stay below long enough to log on! (Huey)
My daughter berated me "Stay in touch daily" I replied "Wish I could"
Regards Briani

 

[jerryat]

Hi mirabriani,

Yep, makes a good case for even bothering in the first place IMHO. If people can't be 'out of touch' for two or three weeks, perhaps they shouldn't have gone in the first place! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Not having a go at you or anyone in particular of course, but the current belief that having email, telephone and God knows what else on board in order to keep in contact all the time, leaves me bemused!! /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Ah well, must be older than I thought!! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Cheers Jerry

 

[Anonymous]

According to that link, Orange France WiFi costs 1€ for 4 minutes!!

 

[pragmatist]

Bemused maybe - but some of us have to keep on earning a living at which point staying in touch with the customers is worthwhile - if not necessarily what we'd all want to do !

 

[Abigail]

In terms of earning a living, we find a mix and match solution is key. First of all use some form of webmail, even iof you then download that to your own email client. That way, you can go on your site, pick out the rubbish etc and delete it, or find other ways to deal with particularly large docs, files etc. Also you can switch from mode to mode as price etc dictate.

Also, as others have said, desicde whether speed, constant availability, scale, price, and location availability matter to you.

This is sent from a mooring buoy in Aldburgh using GPRS on an orange mobile. I have a business contract with them for unltd mb per month which suits me well within the UK, where coverage is good enough. They won't allow anything more than 2mb via email, so for big attachments I go into my webmail and download separately. This does me fine, and orange are the only suppliers who will support Mac users. We have had loads of hassle with vodafone used on our PC laptops.

We use wifi where it is available at a reasonable rate. Often it is outrageously expensive and therefore rarely worth it. I am glad other people have had success with Square Mile, but we have never made it work on eiother macs or PCs. (only tried in Brighton). I love wifi when I can get it, and believe that once the infrastructure costs are paid off it will come down (a la broadband and mobiles). So it pays to have laptops with wifi capacity even if you don't use it very often.

At the moment we also are spending more than half the year in one place. We have therefore installed a landline and broadband on our home pontoon. On this years prices we needed six months there to make this a worthwhile investment. (BT will do this, and charge £70 as you are automatically a 'high risk address' - which seems quite fair to me!) This is what we use for quite a bit of business use, and particularly things like sending photos, big docs and updating websites. The value of such an installation would be highly personal but not difficult to calculate, particularly int he context of business accounts.

Every boat show we thoroughly evaluate the satellite options. So far we are not going far enough from GPRS range to make this a worthwhile investment. However, in the last four years it has dropped hugely both in price and dome size, and may well be worth the investment soon, about the time we really start getting out of range.

We will also be exploring sailmail and winlink when that time comes.

Have you come across Skype (see skype.com) - a very effective way of dramatically reducing your voice call costs to other skype users and landlines if you can get online (by any means). Also investigate onspeed.com as the compression software makes your time online and mb downloads much less, which (depending on your package) may also save you lots.

A key point for us is that we switch carriage depending on where we are and what we are doing - and this applies to land travel as well as sea travel.

HTH and let us know what you decide.

 

[Benbow]

[ QUOTE ]
Have you come across Skype (see skype.com) - a very effective way of dramatically reducing your voice call costs to other skype users and landlines if you can get online (by any means).

[/ QUOTE ]

I would question the 'by any means'. Skype requires a fast connection for voice. Not sure of the numbers but it works well with UK broadband but is close to useless on my present connection which is perfectly respectable for browsing and email (and skype instant messaging). Surely it won't work at all with GPRS?

 

[pragmatist]

Hi Sarah & Pip

Thanks for that - we have decided to eschew GPRS for the moment and are about to enable Darthaven Marina & surrounds for wi-fi broadband to enable us to work from the boat - constrains our sailing a bit but should permit us to get out there at 5pm instead of sitting in the office 70 miles away ! Doubtless we will go for GPRS at some stage but our current work is so heavily web-related that it wouldn't be ideal at present.

I was really replying to jerryat's suggestion that if you couldn't afford to be out of contact for 2 or 3 weeks then you shouldn't be out there. I'm sure being retired is very pleasant but for those of us, like you, who need to carry on working the requirement for comms is vital. And indeed there must also be those who need to keep in touch with elderly relatives who have a similar requirement. Sort of pragmatic lotus-eating is my approach /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif - spending more time with my favourite boat may not be as good as world-girdling but it beats the office ! And I might get some of that list of jobs done too !

Like you we're still researching satellite but costs/speeds don't make financial sense - yet. Still mobile phones were silly money not so many years ago !

Cheers
Penny