Internet & Phone Solutions in the Med

 

Who could be cranky with scenery like this?  Pylos, Greece.

Internet Solutions in the Med.  We really like internet access simply because you get very good easy-to-read weather reports.  Emails can also be the best way to communicate rather than try and talk to someone on cellphone (mobile phone) that has a non-Australian accent (most people outside Oz) and most marinas have English – speaking staff!  If your emails are not answered then you have little choice but to call them direct.  We have adopted the following as the most convenient and thrifty solution for "long-term" stays over the sailing season:

a.  On arrival in a new country we purchase a data dongle and a pay-as-you-go SIM card.  We normally start with about $/Euro20 and see how we go but they may have a special plan so check.  Lesson here is to make it a priority as soon as you enter a country.

b.  The shop may not have what you want so there may be a delay while they get it from their warehouse or another dealer.

c.   The data dongle we retain and will use it again if we re-enter the respective country and purchase credit on the SIM card (as the original will have time-expired).

d.  Check to see how long the SIM card $$$ lasts for.   We have been told one thing eg a month, only to find that it lasted a fortnight. Make the salesman say how long it will last and confirm again before you leave their shop just to be sure.  It’s very frustrating to find you don’t have internet access when you think you should and then you find you have run out of time rather than memory power.  This becomes doubly frustrating when you lose internet access, you are in a remote-ish area and you can’t find a local dealer.

e.  We use Vodafone and have found it generally good, except on one occasion as per the previous paragraph.   You would think that Vodafone would produce a universal dongle for all countries but, alas, data dongles are unique to their respective countries.

f.   Find out, at time of purchase, how you can monitor your usage.  This normally shows up on a drop-down menu which comes up when you open or close your connection but will probably be in the local language. Reading Turkish, for example, is challenging.  If you simply can’t work it out then you can take your paperwork and dongle to the company and they will be able to check your usage.

g.  Keep all paperwork and if you have to go back to your provider they will want to know some number(s).  On each box, SIM card etc there are various serial numbers and so we just let them rummage around amongst all our paperwork (that we keep in assorted plastic bags) and extract what they need.

h.  In Greece there wasn’t a Vodafone shop at Pylos where we entered, however, there was a Cosmote shop and, as this company is the largest mobile network operator in Greece, we assumed that they would be okey.  We purchased a dongle and SIM card, checked it back on board, found it didn’t work, phoned for assistance and were told to check at the next port.  We sailed away, only to find that when we checked at the next Cosmote store, that they couldn’t do anything to assist – it had to be fixed at the shop that sold us the gear.  Emails were exchanged but without result.  The problem was that the SIM card had been used before and so was out of date and couldn’t be ‘revived’.  How it ended back on the shelf as a new dongle is anyone’s guess.  To cut a long story short we continued on our journey with promises by all the friendly staff at various Cosmote stores that it would be sorted by the time we reached the next port, or we would get a new one at the next shop (they never had one in stock), and all-in-all it was never resolved.  Make up your own mind.  Of course, we eventually found a Vodafone shop that had a dongle that suited our requirements (but it wasn’t the first V shop we tried to obtain a dongle). 

Of course, many things change over the years,
some more than others

Phone Solutions in the Med.  We used Go-Sim, a prepaid travel sim, which we purchased in Aus before leaving for our sailing season 2013.  I should add that we have "unlocked" handsets.  Go-Sim gave us a British phone number and we used it to make calls from our smart phones.  It worked well except in some out-of-the-way places.  When you dial a number you get a call back when you are being connected.  It’s a bit weird but you get used to it.  On board and offshore, to find a network that would provide a connection, entailed a bit of searching on Settings trying various providers.  We had new smart phones and we aren’t smart so there was a fairly steep learning curve.

The phones came in handy for speaking (or sending SMS messages) to marinas, contractors or each other, however we mostly used Skype set up on our laptops to call home (Aus).