Friend of mine asked me this and I have no experience with mobile hotspots, especially in Europe. Anyone have any go-to’s? She needs to shuttle semi-large files (hundreds of megs to gigabytes) over a VPN and to/from Google Drive.
I’d like to get some advice on portable equipment as I’m looking to spend a few months in Europe and retouch remotely. Specifically I’m looking into a mobile hotspot solution, a separate device from my phone. I came across a netgear nighthawk M1 or something called skyroam and there were others. Do you have any experiences with wifi on the go? It would be as backup in case I can’t get solid internet but to make sure I can always upload/download work. Any suggestions?
Knowing which country makes it easier to give you specific info, e.g. Greece vs Germany - carriers are different, … but hardware is the same.
It’s actually easier than you think, anything more expensive than £100 for a modem is a waste of money, don’t bother.
Any plan more expensive than £50 a month in any way country for e.g. 50G of data / or 5G/day or something like that is a rip-off, don’t bother.
Data roaming within the EU is not unlimited, it might be unlimited with an asterisk to no more than 100G per month in another country or some other caveat. Check the fine print when choosing a sim/contract and do shop around (UK pricing is pretty low, getting a sim there is probably not a bad idea). Getting to this fine print is surprisingly hard, it’s a legal mandate to have it online but carriers they try to burry it behind lifestyle advertising.
Option 1) Maybe just use a phone to tether - bring a spare or buy something like a oneplus that’s got dual SIM slots. (More then 100 but it’s a good phone).
Option 2) About a year ago I got myself an e3372 USB stick to use as a backup, Huawei makes a bunch of LTE modems in different from factors, anything you get from amazon.co.uk or amazon.de will work fine anywhere in EU, probably anywhere in US as well. This particular one shows up as a USB connected network card, and I didn’t have to install any special drivers to get it working anywhere. I’ve used their edge/3g/LTE stuff for years with no issues. I see now they sell battery powered LTE wifi hotspots for £70, slightly pricy, but OK.
I’m sure tp-link sells something affordable too.
GL.inet e750 is £200 - too much.
Gigabit speed connected McDonald’s or Starbucks are not the norm - 10 megs is probably reasonable to expect on public WiFi. Smaller coffee places might have better wifi - most of them have some kind of login with Facebook portal anyway VPN mostly works but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t - especially from Starbucks for some reason (no idea why those people bother with their networks so much, it’s horrible).
I would get where you are going and deal with it on that end, cellular in western Europe is about like air, but it is much easier, and often better deal to go into the store and get it. Vodafone, and Orange are prevalent in Europe. and each country is going to have some brands that are not everywhere. telecomm is cheap in Europe compared to the U.S. I pay 50 Euros a month for 600mb FTTH, fixed phone, and 3 cell phones, 2 with 10gb data a month, and one with 1GB. back in 2010 I used Vodafone for a wifi hot spot, and it was 50 a month for unlimited, that was prepaid. Again depends on the country, but here in Spain you can get movistar Fiber at 600mb and cell with 25gb a month for 50 a month, with mo contract. so you see it is better to see what is available where she is going.