# help with mobile internet



## n8rbos (Jun 10, 2009)

hi all, i'm looking to get a laptop for overseas use mainly europe, told today that roaming charges are around £3.50 a mb! is this right?how do all yourselves get on?and what service providers do you use?


thanx


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## PaulC (Jun 10, 2009)

I've just bought a vodafone dongle and roaming outside the UK is not allowed! Would it not be cheaper to buy a dongle abroad? But I guess not if touring around a lot.


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## n8rbos (Jun 10, 2009)

thanx paul but i honestly know nowt about abroad and internet, i had a desktop and broadband  lol


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## AndyC (Jun 10, 2009)

n8rbos said:


> hi all, i'm looking to get a laptop for overseas use mainly europe, told today that roaming charges are around £3.50 a mb! is this right?how do all yourselves get on?and what service providers do you use?
> 
> 
> thanx


It's a big problem if you do a lot of travelling, I think the best deal at the moment if you need a reasonable amount internet use is a Vodafone pay monthly 1GB, 3GB or 5GB plan. The cost is £9.99/24 hours for up to 50Mb
See: Internet access abroad and international roaming charges ? Vodafone

For occasional use picking up email in Europe I use a T-Mobile standard PAYG sim in an unlocked USB modem, that costs me £1.50/Mb
See: Mobile Internet Abroad - Mobile Phones Abroad - T-Mobile

If staying in one country for a long time it is sometimes worth checking out the cost of buying a local 3G sim or usb modem. Last winter we were in Morocco and I got a local 3G PAYG sim card which gave unlimited usage for about £16/month

AndyC


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## Deleted member 207 (Jun 11, 2009)

Do a Google on free wifi in the countries you will visit - we found plenty of places that you could access (someone else's internet??). Also try Googling "wardriving" which is the geeks name for locating and giving GPS coords for wifi access - often in or around large factories or offices with unsecured access.

McDonald's provided free wifi in Scandanavia when we were there in 2007, often in the car park. I think that's been expanded to most of Europe now. About a 50Mb limit per session.

Some cities in Norway had free wifi across the whole city - Tromso I think was one.

You can also download programmes like "network stumbler" that have a nosy around wifi connections and discover the appropriate details to enable you to log in. All very illegal.

I had a little plug in wifi card that worked as long as we were really close to the wifi source. I now have a USB wifi stick with a 3 metre cable extension that I can poke outside the window and hey presto it works very well.

If you want to stay totally legal and have very high speed internet then the likes of Inmarsat have deals using the marine satellite systems. No hunting wifi, just open the dish and wait for 3 green lights. Not cheap though.


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## runnach (Jun 12, 2009)

I can vouch for France, that Mac Donalds and Campanile hotels offe rfree wi fi.

A lot of tourist information centres too ,,,,some are wi fi some hard wired ...and great fun ( not ) working a french keyboard!!.

All part of the fun tho 

Channa


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## PaulC (Jun 12, 2009)

Roger said:


> Do a Google on free wifi in the countries you will visit - we found plenty of places that you could access (someone else's internet??).



Careful this is illegal, a few months ago in this country some people where caught sitting outside a house doing this! And abroad it may be very serious in certain countries.


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## petercheason (Jun 12, 2009)

channa said:


> I can vouch for France, that Mac Donalds and Campanile hotels offe rfree wi fi.
> 
> A lot of tourist information centres too ,,,,some are wi fi some hard wired ...and great fun ( not ) working a french keyboard!!.
> 
> ...



I agree with you Channa all the Tourist info centres in France have cheao access at about 1 euro for a half hour but they use their own keyboard as you say.They also tend to use applemac and I got very frustrated ,being a windows xp man, on grappling with both keyboard and different system. However I am away most weeks throughout the Uk and find my 3 dongle works a treat and the young man from 3 said it works abroad ok at about a £1 a Mgb , however if you are only reading and surfing its as cheap as chips .


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## PaulC (Jun 12, 2009)

My recently bought PAYG Vodafone dongle does not work abroad, according to the instructions, but perhaps there is a hack for it?


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## AndyC (Jun 12, 2009)

petercheason said:


> the young man from 3 said it works abroad ok at about a £1 a Mgb , however if you are only reading and surfing its as cheap as chips .



£1/Mb is quite good for roaming data, however the Three website quotes £3/Mb for most of Europe... Can you get more details of the £1/Mb deal?

AndyC


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## PaulC (Jun 13, 2009)

petercheason said:


> at about a £1 a Mgb , however if you are only reading and surfing its as cheap as chips .


 A meg is hardly anything even for just surfing the net, it would cost a fortune.


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## AndyC (Jun 13, 2009)

PaulC said:


> A meg is hardly anything even for just surfing the net, it would cost a fortune.


Yes, for general browsing roaming data is very expensive. You can reduce the cost a bit by making sure that all automatic updates are turned off (anti-virus, Windows, etc) and also by turning off images in your browser.

I really only use roaming data for picking up and sending emails, and occasionally online banking. I save any serious work till I find a wifi connection, or as we did in Morocco, get a local 3G sim card.

AndyC


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## t&s (Jun 13, 2009)

we have been looking at this 3 mobile dongle but are finding it hard to fond info on the net any one got a link that will show use for euroup


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## lescombes (Jun 30, 2009)

used my T-Mobile dongle in Europe no probs.....gone down fro £7.50 mb to £1.50 mb this year....going to be lower next year....


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## PaulC (Jul 1, 2009)

Surely at those prices you can hardly do anything on the internet? 1mb is not a lot of credit!


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## AndyC (Jul 1, 2009)

t&s said:


> we have been looking at this 3 mobile dongle but are finding it hard to fond info on the net any one got a link that will show use for euroup


Three now charge £1.25/Mb for most of Europe, details here

AndyC


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## PaulC (Jul 1, 2009)

yep it says three pages on your computer. It'll not take long to ring up a huge bill!


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## AndyC (Jul 1, 2009)

PaulC said:


> yep it says three pages on your computer. It'll not take long to ring up a huge bill!



Agreed that it's expensive, but if you run an online business internet access is essential. Costs can be reduced by reducing 'casual' browsing and by turning images off in your browser settings. You must make sure that all automatic updates are turned off too.

As I said earlier, I use roaming internet mainly for email, and have my email software set to only download the first 10kb of a message, then I can check to see if it's necessary to download the rest.

AndyC


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## Polly (Jul 1, 2009)

Hia
I have a vodafone 3mg dongle. It doesnot work abroad and in this country I can google but cannot send e mails any ideas why

the only way I can send messages to the family is through face book and I can get on here ok.

The reason i got it was so i could keep in touch with the family when i am away
Thanks


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## AndyC (Jul 1, 2009)

Polly said:


> Hia
> I have a vodafone 3mg dongle. It doesnot work abroad and in this country I can google but cannot send e mails any ideas why
> 
> the only way I can send messages to the family is through face book and I can get on here ok.
> ...


The reason you can't send email when using your USB modem is that you are connected to a different ISP (Vodafone) than the one you use at home. Your laptop will be set up to send email through your home ISP and those settings won't be accepted by Vodafone.

The easiest way to send emails when using a USB modem (dongle) is to use a web based mail system. Your home ISP is quite likely to have such a system, basically you log into a special area on their website where you can read your new emails and also send emails.

AndyC


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## mildred (Jul 3, 2009)

*e-Mail on the move*



AndyC said:


> The reason you can't send email when using your USB modem is that you are connected to a different ISP (Vodafone) than the one you use at home. Your laptop will be set up to send email through your home ISP and those settings won't be accepted by Vodafone.


I'd been struggling for too long to get as concise an explanation of the  problem as the one Andy came up with - I was just ending up in extreme geek speek  every time!

I can offer some extra advice though which I *hope* will be understandable...

Part of the problem using a dongle is that speeds are slower than on broadband and also that you may be charged fo the amount of data that's moved around.  For simple basic reading of *text* e-mail - no attachments or pretty backgrounds - I suggest using either yahoo co uk or googlemail and set your web browser to *NOT* use javascript.  This really makes a difference to being able to quickly read an e-mail and log off and clear down the connection.  As far as I know these are the only two relatively secure web based email providers that function without javascript - you certainly need javascript to use hotmail.  

If anybody is using a 3 dongle on an ASUS EEEPC I suggest ditching the Xandros  and installing Ubuntu NBR - not quite "out of the box" but a lot easier than trying to use the manufacturers system.


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## AndyC (Jul 3, 2009)

mildred said:


> I'd been struggling for too long to get as concise an explanation of the  problem as the one Andy came up with - I was just ending up in extreme geek speek  every time!
> 
> I can offer some extra advice though which I *hope* will be understandable...
> 
> ...



Personally I wouldn't recommend Yahoo, too many spammers use Yahoo email addresses.

I use Googlemail, mainly because of it's excellent span filtering capability. You can set up Googlemail to work through your email client, which does give you the ability to receive AND send email using your email software, rather than having to log onto the website. I don't need to do that because my ISP offers authenticated SMTP, which means I can use it to receive and send from any internet connection.

AndyC


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