Well here we are in the Old Dart. My future son in law Tim is an IT professional who was working in London at the time and was able to help me set up my phone for accessing the Internet. My intention was to obtain a data only Sim card (which is what I had in Australia) so that I could put that in our MiFi and that would enable us to connect our laptops iPhone and iPad2 (which I picked up in Dubai before the world-wide simultaneous release).
Wrong! while there are devices like MiFi on the market in the UK they are generally tied in with landlines or mobile accounts and are not available on prepaid or short term contracts. This means that the only option is to get a general phone Sim with phone, SMS, and data. The data component can be added to if the 1 Gig limit is exceeded. The Sim cards can be topped up over the net - BUT - you will need a UK credit account. Our credit cards wouldn't work. Local shops will do it for you (and accept your Australian credit cards as well).
However for all of your travel needs in Europe it is worthwhile investigating getting a local credit account which will enable you to not only top up your phone accounts online, but will allow you to hire street pushbikes in Europe which require a European credit card as a deposit.
I had been in contact with the MiFi Manufacturers since Dubai and attempts to update the firmware from the provided patch meant that the device was unable to complete the update properly and wouldn't work at all. A new device couldn't be sourced from the UK as it was sourced from a third-party. This ended any hope of using this device in Europe.
With this option out it left phone tethering as our only viable option, as my computer dongle was locked to Telstra and it wasn't possible to unlock it from the UK.
Note: When attempting to connect a dongle or phone to a new network overseas it is best to get it connected and configured at the point of purchase of the Sim as it can involve registering the Sim on the network via a website. If you don't have a screen (with the MiFi Device) this becomes hard, even with the phone or computer option it can be hard in foreign languages. In Italy even when I was registering using the English page option - after navigating through several screens it reverted to the default Italian language. This is not necessarily the fault of the site, but due to the default rendering of the websites based on your locale and the service providers settings. ie if you are connecting to the web from a village in Italy it will sometimes default to Italian even though you have specified English as your browser default, and have selected the English page on a selected webpage.
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Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
On The Way
We had planned for a break in Bali for a couple of weeks to unwind for our holiday and just veg out before the more full-on activities in Europe. When traveling around in resorts and hotels internet access is very expensive. So we didn't do much more than check our emails and spent limited time using the connections provided by the hotels where we were staying.
Our next stop was a week in Dubai where the Internet costs were even higher, so we hardly bothered except on the last day to check out our arrival details in London.
Meeting up with our daughter Traci and her partner Tim in London enabled us to setup our base and with their assistance we attempted to organise ourselves for our travels.
Our next stop was a week in Dubai where the Internet costs were even higher, so we hardly bothered except on the last day to check out our arrival details in London.
Meeting up with our daughter Traci and her partner Tim in London enabled us to setup our base and with their assistance we attempted to organise ourselves for our travels.
Out Of The House
I had set up the MiFi 3G Mode at home and had done the basics so I felt confident that it would do the job for us, but the final test is how things go in the wild.
When we had let our house we had to move into our caravan and leave all the creature comforts of home (such as they were) and tailor our living requirements to the more compact form. In setting up our printer we had to engage the technical support from Internode, they were very helpful and we were up and running in no time.
As time went by I became aware that the MiFi device was working overtime and would overheat and shutdown. Then it would not reset itself with the only button available. As we were near to heading overseas I was keen to get this fixed. Internode supplied me with a replacement unit but it appeared to have similar symptoms. The only way to get it to work on some occasions was to remove the battery and completely reboot the device. With time running out we left for OS with the MiFi device unlocked so that we could use it on European networks.
When we had let our house we had to move into our caravan and leave all the creature comforts of home (such as they were) and tailor our living requirements to the more compact form. In setting up our printer we had to engage the technical support from Internode, they were very helpful and we were up and running in no time.
As time went by I became aware that the MiFi device was working overtime and would overheat and shutdown. Then it would not reset itself with the only button available. As we were near to heading overseas I was keen to get this fixed. Internode supplied me with a replacement unit but it appeared to have similar symptoms. The only way to get it to work on some occasions was to remove the battery and completely reboot the device. With time running out we left for OS with the MiFi device unlocked so that we could use it on European networks.
Setting up for Travel
As we were planning for travel around Australia in our caravan I wanted to have something more akin to our WiFi setup at home rather than just relying on tethering from our phones. Checking out the options available at the time I settled on the MiFi 3G Modem that was available through our broadband provider Internode.
This device was quite sleek, could easily fit in ones pocket and could handle up to 5 connections. When using it in the caravan we can plug it in and it connects well with our WiFi HP 5560 Printer. The plan that we decided on was for 5 Gigabytes a month which is stopped when the limit is reached so that no overcharging is possible and this can be supplemented in the short term with additional gigabytes as required. This is provided via the Optus network, which I am hoping will provide reasonable coverage on our Australian leg. In any event I have upgraded my Telstra data account to 6.5 Gigabytes per month (more on that later) in case we really get stuck.
This device was quite sleek, could easily fit in ones pocket and could handle up to 5 connections. When using it in the caravan we can plug it in and it connects well with our WiFi HP 5560 Printer. The plan that we decided on was for 5 Gigabytes a month which is stopped when the limit is reached so that no overcharging is possible and this can be supplemented in the short term with additional gigabytes as required. This is provided via the Optus network, which I am hoping will provide reasonable coverage on our Australian leg. In any event I have upgraded my Telstra data account to 6.5 Gigabytes per month (more on that later) in case we really get stuck.
The Genesis
I have created this blog in response to the interest I have received since returning from a six month tour overseas - mainly in Europe.
We had made a decision to rent our house out for a couple of years and to head overseas for an extended holiday and then to continue living in our caravan while our house was still occupied, spend the next couple of years traveling and working our way around Australia.
Having had an IT background I have long had the desire to be truly mobile and be able to access the web and develop a business model which enables me to work and travel without any limitations. At the time we had a wireless broadband setup in our home which enabled my wife and I to share the internet connection via a home computer, two laptops and my iPhone. This meant that we could do our normal software updates and software downloads easily and without killing our data allowances on our phone plans. I had a minimal 150 Meg allowance through Telstra which proved quite adequate for the average browsing that I was doing and as I mainly downloaded Apps from home that didn't cause me to go over my limit, even with that small data limit.
We had made a decision to rent our house out for a couple of years and to head overseas for an extended holiday and then to continue living in our caravan while our house was still occupied, spend the next couple of years traveling and working our way around Australia.
Having had an IT background I have long had the desire to be truly mobile and be able to access the web and develop a business model which enables me to work and travel without any limitations. At the time we had a wireless broadband setup in our home which enabled my wife and I to share the internet connection via a home computer, two laptops and my iPhone. This meant that we could do our normal software updates and software downloads easily and without killing our data allowances on our phone plans. I had a minimal 150 Meg allowance through Telstra which proved quite adequate for the average browsing that I was doing and as I mainly downloaded Apps from home that didn't cause me to go over my limit, even with that small data limit.
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