Well hello again! Yes. I am still alive. So sorry to have been away so long but I have a) been busy with all sorts of stuff and b) not been doing anything connected with boats or canals. However further Herbie excursions are coming real soon and we have plans for some engine bay improvements in the next few weeks.
Now that I'm back I have something you might need to know, and it concerns the growing number of us using mifi internet routers on board our boats. We've been very happy with our Huawei thingy on board Herbie as I have written in the past, but there has been a growing problem, which is the rising cost of buying the band width. Over the past year the price of the 3 mobile ready loaded sims has virtually doubled. A 3gig one now costs nearly twenty quid even from eBay suppliers.
Never fear. Kath has been on the case and has discovered a new service called mobidata who are an outfit that supplies only data sims at a lower cost that anyone else. They do a range of tariffs depending on how much data you want, but they are all on a monthly rolling contract so you can cancel anytime. We got a free trial sim from them and tried it out in our gubbins today, and after a bit of configuration it works fine. The good news is that the network they use is the 3 mobile one, so connectivity is fine. Depending whether you want 1, 5, or 10 gig per month you pay just under 5, 15, or 20 quid. At the moment you get double at the same price for three months if you sign up before the end of Jan. That beats 3 quite comfortably especially I'd you use a lot of bandwidth. We'll let you know how we get on with it.
I'm towpath rangering on Tuesday so maybe I'll have a tale to tell.
Posted with Blogsy
6 comments:
So glad you're still with us :-)
Looking forward to the Herbie chronicles...
Sue, nb Indigo Dream
I have a monthly contract with 3, £15.99 for 15GB !
Glad to see you back, Neil. I was getting quite worried :-)
Have a look at 3 mobiles one plan, it costs about £25 a month for unlimited data, loads of minutes on calls and too many texts for anyone to use in a month. I also go at free samsung s2 phone with the deal which I use in a smimilar situation to a mifi dongle i.e by using the tethering function to turn the phone into a router to which you can access the internet via any wifi enabled device. I even have mine attached to a roof top aerial to improve reception as some samsung phones have a aerial connection under the back cover. I use between 30 and 40 gig a month but I do use it to stream a lot of tv/films.
hope this info helps.
If they use 3 did you have to get your MiFi unlocked?
B /D
all we had to do was to change something called the APN by logging onto the device admin screen which you get if you go to http://192.168.1.1 and you can change any settings on the device. Most routers and such like work this way. I got instructions off the web for our particular device.
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