Which Mifi?

[Gypsyjoss]

I see there is a review of various sorts of communication devices in the latest YM. What struck me in particular was how expensive the ones tested were. Only scanned through it so far but there seemed to be little under £100. My ZTE 63 was well under half that and works perfectly well in Greece.

According to my sailing neighbour, the price of one of the items reviewed doubled in price after the article was published! So surprising!
Pete

 

[maxi77]

I have recently started using the Huwei E5573 MIFI and have found it very good. We got good performance in an area where mobile phones were barely working.

 

[Marmalade]

Is there a device that connects to a marina's wifi and then presents as a hotspot - failing over to mobile data (4g/3g) if the wifi signal is too weak?

I wrote this and now I'm thinking - isn't that what my phone can do...?

 

[Bob the Dog]

Just a word of caution. Check the unit you are considering doesn't have an auto turn off 'feature'. I had a Hauwei mini box from UK3 which stopped working after an hour if I didn't use it. Took so long to reconnect Safari kept saying 'not connected to the internet'. Very annoying. Changed to EE and the supplied Mifi box did the same. I bought a TP Link unit which never turns off (i.e. I was able to switch auto turn off off) and is rock solid even in bottom of the valley harbours in Cornwall. Also not tied to any network so if you can get a data SIM it will work.

 

[JanZ]

We are using a huawei E5330 in Greece with in general terms good solid coverage running a Vodafone sim- 28 euros initially including 9.5gb of data and thereafter monthly topups at 10 euros for 9.5gb. Today in Pilos am connecting at 11mbits/second!!

Jan

 

[neil1967]

Is there a device that connects to a marina's wifi and then presents as a hotspot - failing over to mobile data (4g/3g) if the wifi signal is too weak?

I wrote this and now I'm thinking - isn't that what my phone can do...?

No - at least my phones don't - if you enable the hotspot on a phone it disables wifi reception.

 

[RobbieW]

Is there a device that connects to a marina's wifi and then presents as a hotspot - failing over to mobile data (4g/3g) if the wifi signal is too weak?

I wrote this and now I'm thinking - isn't that what my phone can do...?

You could do that with ROOter, http://ofmodemsandmen.com/index.html, a variant of OpenWRT/LEDE on any of the supported routers where wifi works (some dont because the open source drivers arent very good, mainly Broadcom)