WIFI

[ham]

I am installing wifi into my van . any suggestions on sim card to use . Uk and EU?

[witzend]

For the UK just depends whats on offer I had a good deal 2 yrs ago with Vodafone unlimited every thing for £20 mth but can't find it now

 

https://www.giffgaff.com/sim-only-deals?ggCampaign=PS_G_Generic_DSA_FreeSIM_New&gclid=CjwKCAjwiuuRBhBvEiwAFXKaNNs84_MdP4Lcn5-uziyWY1E0Cs7wg0nrHtKLCt6mCaHgo7EbjpL18xoCZJwQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

For EU perhaps buy a local sim for the country your in

[John52]

You've been robbed ;-)

I'm on BT at home which gives me free Wi-fi from everyone else's BT home router.

As long as I am near houses I nearly always get a good enough signal

Having a steel van with no windows I need an external antennae, but you might not need one in a coachbuilt.

In the highlands I have used a signal from miles away, in cities not very far because of obstructions and interference. I guess when I park I get wifi about 75% of the places, (apart from Hull where everyone seems to be on Kingston Communications) which is enough for me because I move on frequently.

[witzend]

John52 - 2022-03-24 7:11 AM

 

You've been robbed I'm on BT at home

 

For less than 20£ a month ? https://www.bt.com/landline/ an thats just the line charge

[veletron]

Hi

 

I've got EE, Vodafone and O2 in a multi-sim MiFi router in the van. EE is by far the most consistent here in Scotland due to the ESN contract (Emergency Services Network), which see's 4G deployed in remote glens via base-stations that utilise satellite backhaul.

 

I Pay:

 

- £8.90 for EE, and share the 200GB that I get on my phone (£20/month contract) with the Van's SIM

- £10 for Vodafone for 150GB/Month - reduced from the normal £20/month as I have Vodafone full fibre at home

- £12 for 50GB on O2 (via LycaMobile) PayG monthly no contract

 

Speed wise, the EE towers on Satellite backhaul are rather slow <10Mbits, and I often find that Vodafone and O2 offer better speeds than EE where available.

 

I work from the van quite often hence the many sims!

 

Karen

[Barryd999]

veletron - 2022-03-25 9:42 AM

 

Hi

 

I've got EE, Vodafone and O2 in a multi-sim MiFi router in the van. EE is by far the most consistent here in Scotland due to the ESN contract (Emergency Services Network), which see's 4G deployed in remote glens via base-stations that utilise satellite backhaul.

 

I Pay:

 

- £8.90 for EE, and share the 200GB that I get on my phone (£20/month contract) with the Van's SIM

- £10 for Vodafone for 150GB/Month - reduced from the normal £20/month as I have Vodafone full fibre at home

- £12 for 50GB on O2 (via LycaMobile) PayG monthly no contract

 

Speed wise, the EE towers on Satellite backhaul are rather slow <10Mbits, and I often find that Vodafone and O2 offer better speeds than EE where available.

 

I work from the van quite often hence the many sims!

 

Karen

 

Have I read that right Karen? You got a 200gb sim from EE for £8.90 a month?

 

I am on Vodafone and last year in Scotland struggled a bit so I am waiting on a Alpha Long range 4g Antenna arriving and router which will take a sim but the EE sims PAYG are £30 for 100gb or £20 for 30gb every 30 days. Ill only need it for two or three months.

 

https://shop.ee.co.uk/sim-only/pay-as-you-go-phones

 

I have an iboost antenna for wifi which like John I use for picking up BT wifi hotspots but its not always possible in the remote places we stay.

[veletron]

Nope, I have a 200GB, £20/month 24 month sim-only contract and I added a shared sim (which you can no longer get) to that account for £8.90 and it shares the data from it. So total for 2 sims, 200GB shared between then is £28.90 I have been with EE for eons, and come renewal time I always have a wee online chat with them and end up coming away with a better deal vs what's shown online.

 

When BT Fon was a thing (BT pulled out of FON last year), I used to do the same re WiFi access via my FON account. The kit is still on the van, but these days its used for occasional reception of campsite WiFi. I enjoy Synchronus Gigabit fibre at home via Cityfibre/Vodafone - if I was to switch to BT, I would go from 1000Mbits both ways to about 40 down, 6 up!

[ham]

Thank you for your replies..

I have checked out a few most charge for use in the EU now £2 a day.

Offers for sim only vary from £8 up

I already have a bt mobile contract Thier offer £15 a month with roam like home looks good .EE OFFERED WITH Bt customer discount came out as £25 A month.

Not in Hurry but checked Mobile prices are going up end of the month

Thanks again

[Brian Kirby]

Recently checked this for phones. There are several that claim not to be charging for roaming your UK contract use in EU, but we found that of these Virgin, O2, and Vodafone all had a fair use policy that ended if you spent more than 63 days roaming. After that there was a daily charge of £1 or £2 plus, I think, additional charges if you exceeded your UK contract allowance. I quizzed O2 a bit on there definition of roaming and was told that once your phone "pings" a "foreign" phone mast you are deemed to be roaming, and you will continue to be deemed to be roaming until your phone next "pings" a UK mast. It would not matter whether the phone was switched on, or off, during that time. That little twist wasn't explained in the on-line explanation of the 63 days fair use limit.

 

There are some smaller, independent, providers who bulk-buy airtime off the big provides and "piggy-back" on their systems. I found Smarty (who at first looked good but whose offer seemed too good to be true, borne out by complaints that their technical and customer services were sadly lacking) Lebara (who we had some years ago and were fine) but whose current offer I did not explore because we then found Tesco Mobile, who piggy-back on O2, and have various SIM and 'phone packages that earn Tesco points.

 

So as we have a Tesco card I delved into their roaming policy. We now have two Tesco Mobile SIMS. They claim that their roaming policy allows the full use of the UK contract allowance while roaming without the 63 day (or any other) time limit. There are charges for exceeding the contract limit. It seems the data allowance on the SIM can more or less be changed on demand, but I haven't tried to do this as yet. The prices for the packages (all, if I remember, with unlimited call time and texts) seemed to me reasonable compared to most of the others we looked at, depending on the amount of data included. If two SIMS are registered to the same home address to create a "family bundle" there are optional benefits in terms of Tesco points or money off. So, might be worth looking at.