Best solution for Internet Access while traveling
 

Let's cut to the chase. What is the best solution for someone who is looking for internet access while traveling? We are talking personal travel here, so that means no budget to put it on, so price counts. Obviously want to be able to do things like email and twitter and facebook, but also want to be able to stream movies while waiting at the airport or in your hotel room. Being able to connect your phone to use it for WiFi calling is also a good thing. Hopefully it is something you can use in multiple countries, too.

Depends on the type of travel, i.e. international, regional (e.g. only US/Canada/Mexico) or domestically as there are different offers available. My mobile phone plan covers most of the destination I'm heading too. For the few countries that are not covered I usually use a local prepaid data sims.

Free wifi. In major cities, it's ubiquitous. I just never use it for banking or paying bills.

Free wifi + VPN = We should all feel pretty safe, including for most important transactions; Thus the starting point ought to be acquring a solid VPN provider, budgeting a $35 to $40 fee a year.

Other than US/Canada, I buy a local sim card at whatever airport I arrive at.

I research before leaving home which is the best option, and save a picture of the booth (if available) and the airport map on my phone.

I let them set it up, and I make sure it is working properly before I walk away.

I probably pay a bit more than I would otherwise (5-7 USD per day, on average, I'd say), but given how much having the the internet/google maps, etc adds to my trips, I'm more than happy to do so.

Besides, it's a tiny percentage of my total trip budget.

I use SkyRoam's original hotspot. Uses a proprietary technology to connect to cellular data networks in a huge number of countries around the world, and then makes a hotspot to which you can connect five devices. It costs US $8 per 24 hours of continuous use, including in multiple countries you might visit during those 24 hours. Activate a day pass only on 24-hour periods when you are away from free/hotel/lounge WiFi access. In addition to the built-in $8 day passes, you can insert a local SIM so that you can save some money if you are staying in one country for many days.

(I do not work for SkyRoam and have no connection to the company other than being a satisfied customer.)

How is the speed? I have gotten really tired of hotel wireless that even when you pay extra it is still slow as molasses and won't connect unless you sit right in front of the door to the hallway.

Anyone use T-mobile abroad? We are planning to switch to them as they offer unlimited data/text abroad.

I have used T-Mobile for my phone. Works well enough, but had a bear of a time getting my phone to work the first time. Had to go in and change the APN settings. Then it worked like a charm. Of course I was using on an old AT&T G3, so that may have been part of the issue.

I have used the data on the phone itself, for things like checking email and google maps and such, which again worked fine once I had the right APN settings. But was never able to get this phone to tether.

Works really well for email, browsing, navigation, messaging, social media, Skype calls, etc. You get 500 MB per day pass at 4G/HSPA+ speeds. Beyond that, data remains unlimited, but speed drops to 2G/3G for the rest of the 24-hour period. Skyroam is not intended for heavy usage like video streaming or gaming. So, it's not going to replace hotel/land-based WiFi for intensive purposes such as data transfers and video streaming. Rather, it is intended for "on the go" access while you are touring, walking the streets, navigating around a city, etc. I find that in a typical busy day of touring, I use maybe 250-300 MB doing basic stuff, so I'm still within the high-speed cap. When I go back to the hotel, I power down the Skyroam and use hotel wifi so I'm not burning through data until I go out on the streets again.

What I really like is that Skyroam does not require messing around with SIMs, and it replaces paying your cell phone company $10 per day for data roaming overseas, like most major carriers offer these days.

Pretty much every other country besides the US has figured out how to make "messing around with SIMs" trivial. Two weeks ago I had a 1h30m minute international-to-domestic connection at AKL and still stopped to grab a SIM. Took all of 90 seconds to buy and insert the SIM and walk out of the store fully connected with a plan that costs 14% of what these $10/day passes would for my trip.

Local SIMs, along with wifi hotspots, are going to be your cheapest and most reliable sources of internet while traveling abroad.

I do. I changed to that plan the month it came out as it met my needs perfectly, being out of the U.S. 6-8 times a year. Prior to this plan I did not have an international plan as I couldn't find one that worked with my travel pattern at a decent price. In the last few months I've used it in Canada, Australia, Singapore, Germany, Heathrow Airport while in transit, and back to the UK for a visit this week. I'm on the over-55 plan which is a flat $50 a month including all taxes. I couldn't be happier with my choice. I do tend to upload a lot of photos on my phone and have found the connections reliable. Although they only guarantee 2G, I find that I get faster speeds (3G/4G) most of the time.

One caution: there are some countries where TMobile does not offer the coverage. I know Cuba is one place. It's all spelled out in their country list.

I was at a frequent flyer event last month in Germany with the German frequent flyer group VFT and some of those folks seemed very sensitive about using data as they did not have unlimited data and had to deal with caps. I seemed to be the only one at the table surfing and posting photos while others were sharing the restaurant wi-fi codes that were being passed around.

Interesting, we were just planning on using our verizon phones when we switched over since neither of us since neither of us liked any of the new phones over the ones we currently have. Even though my lg v10 is starting to lag.

Thats is awesome. It really does seem like an amazing deal compared to what Verizon and ATT have to offer. I have a business trip to China and then one for leisure to Bali in the works and my friends say that T-Mobile no longer has horrible coverage stateside so it seems like its time for a switch.

Has anyone been to China with Tmobile, were you able to visit gmail and other google services with it or should I get a vpn before going?

Make sure it is compatible, first. TMobile is all GSM, and uses bands 2,4, and 12 for 4gLTE. Verizon I think uses bands 2, 4, and 13, and is cdma. Some phones can work pn multiple netwoprks, others cannot. You have to be very specific - not just for instance an LG G3, but an LG G3 D850.

I currently use ProjectFi for mobile data while traveling outside the US. The initial overhead cost is higher as you need to buy a Fi supported phone to activate the voice + sms sim and you also pay for any data used in a covered country, unlike T-Mobile which allows unlimited slower roaming. I prefer pay for $10 for 1GB of LTE speed data when using Google Maps to navigate via car/train or downloading a chunk of e-mail. Fi will credit any unused data from the prepaid data bucket so if you used 500MB, it will issue $5 credit applied to next month's prepaid bill. $10 for 1GB is also a low enough price point for me to forgo a local sim if I have decent access to wifi for data hogging applications. I also use the data only sims in secondary devices like a tablet and it also supports a mifi, where I could choose from region specific models that include more LTE coverage than SkyRoam's unit. The data sims share the same data bucket as the voice+sms sim. Fi Pixel/Nexus phones also have automatic VPN Wifi-Assistant on public wifi networks in multiple countries https://support.google.com/nexus/ans...where_it_works

Offers a good comparison between Fi and T-Mobile
https://sightdoing.net/project-fi-vs-t-mobile/

TheFlightDeal's summary & $20 off.
https://www.theflightdeal.com/2017/1...tional-travel/

My domestic carrier is Verizon (Prepaid) because that's what offers good coverage in the places I spend 95% of my time in. Data usage is mostly via wifi.

Basically, I can maintain 2 prepaid lines per month for the cost of 1 post pay domestic mostly line. MVNO's are pretty competitive with their pricing. You just need to make sure to setup auto-pay and pick a stable provide to avoid losing your phone number (new activation while you're out of the country would be difficult).

Pixel 2 supports Fi with eSim and a local sim (one or the other, not dual sim standby) if you need a local sim https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectFi/c...riers/dojkeqf/ Cell phone reviewers mention good things about Pixel 2 camera. https://www.frequencycheck.com/model...gb-htc-walleye