Travel Technology - International mobile broadband options

I must be going about the search wrong, since this HAS to be a major topic of discussion for this forum, but I couldn't find any recent information.

I travel regularly between offices in the US and Spain, and generally have my internet connections well worked out on either side and my connecting airports in between.

However, this summer I am going to be doing some extended travel in rather remote parts of Scandinavia (Iceland, Greenland, Faroe Islands) and maritime Canada, where I don't expect to consistently be able to find convenient wifi hotspots, and so I am looking for the first time at mobile broadband modems for my laptop. My understanding from colleagues who rely on them is that the technology has improved greatly.

The problem is that my internet usage, albeit for business purposes (on the road, I am not spending a lot of time watching mentos in Coke explosions), is fairly intensive. Just sending/receiving emails from Outlook and chasing a few customer orders I can easily burn through 50-100 Mb per day.

So, I checked with my Spanish cellular provider, and they can provide a lovely USB modem for next to nothing and charge for data usage at a rate of 5 euros per day for up to 500 Mb. At 1 euro cent per Mb, no problem. In Spain.

Their rates for use outside Spain, however, seem to be 10 euros per Mb, regardless of location. I had to run the numbers a couple of times to convince myself that was really true - that use in the UK, for example, would be billed as 1000 times more expensive than use domestically.

I thought surely this must be an anomaly, so I started to look at their domestic competitors, and found their rates for international roaming service largely similar.

So, I ask you - what IS the solution? Is there no provider offering a reasonable flat-rate or high-usage plan for international roaming where wifi service is unavailable?

While I will not be returning to the U.S. before starting my Scandinavian trip, I could have equipment or a SIM card sent to me from the U.S., so really solutions available either in Europe or the U.S. could be viable (we have our U.S. cellular service with Verizon FWIW).

Thank you for your advice.

Good questions. I think a lot of us will be following this closely as my situation is similar, albeit much less complicated than yours.

I use Tmobile in the US and UK, both for voice and mobile data, and have to swap sims to avoid roaming charges. It seems like there should be something a little more elegant and not involving the phone number roulette.

Just as an added datapoint - Tmobile UK recently began offering a USB stick dock unit. I'm wondering if this will provide me with a mobile hotspot for my Blackberry - which doesn't incur roaming charges or use minutes with the Hotspot@Home service.

Another thought is to explore the Google Voice service to make everything work with a single phone number.

Check out this website (http://prepaid-wireless-internet-access.wetpaint.com/) for some good info.

I haven't found anybody with a good international data plan, so I use a local SIM in each country (Tchibo in Germany €20 for up to 10GB in a month, or Vodafone DE for short trips, €5/day; Three in the UK with various plans)

There are some good signs, though. Three had a promotion "Three at home" where you could use your Three SIM on any other Three network for the same price as your home network. I used my Three UK SIM in Hong Kong at it worked fine. But this promo ends June 30. I think I remember reading that Vodafone UK had something in the works, but I done use them so I didn't pay attention.

Here is a link to the Voda promotion:

http://www.abroad.vodafone.co.uk/index.cfm?do=abroad.laptop&me=a6&nu=1&le=6

It is not as good as Three, but it is not as bad. Note that the Faroes or Greenland do not appear to be on the list.

Turning to Canada. I've struggled with Canada for years and have come to the position that the best offer from Canada comes from either Sprint or Verizon. Buy one of their data cards off E-bay. You can now do a non-contract activation of them (e.g. month-to-month). For around $US110 you can get 5gigs of data that can be used in Canada.

FIDO in Canada has offered this for roughly $CN35, but you need to do a three contract for it. I have minimal Canadian credit, but I have to buy a long term contract for it.

If you buy an international Blackberry plan which includes world wide data, it is possible to cheat a little but your usage is well over the limits that I think you can safely get away with. When I've tethered my Global Blackberry, I disable all flash, block all ads, shut off all updates, and tell Outlook to download headers only. If you cheat correctly they can't see the tethering, but a large amount of data consumption can be just as big a red flag.