WiFi on the road...

[Mint Sauce]

I recently purchased an UNLOCKED Sierra Wireless 4G LTE WiFi hot spot from Ebay for $110 including shipping and got a sim card/ flex data plan with Telus in Whistler, BC for my Whistler biking trips this summer. Because I live in the US it took a while to get set up, but we got it figured out in the end. Works great so far (and 4G LTE speeds are FAST, 27 Mbps down 8 Mbps up) and I can use Google Voice for texts and Skype for phone calls. I'll be using the same device in Europe and hope I can get it working in a similar way.

[DanAatTheCape]

I used a mifi 2200 on verizon last 2 years. Just got a 4g hotspot 890L for this summer.

[Mikesta]

You mean MIFI right? We did wifi on the road and skipped mifi due to the speeds at the time. I used a Rogue Wave Wifi repeater to pull in the wireless signals. It did pretty good as it should for that kind of money! Good to hear that mifi speeds are that fast now! WOW.

[DanAatTheCape]

mifi 2200 is a cell phone product. The 890L I just got is the same. They work on cellphone networks, Usually called hotspots, can also get a dongle that plugs into a usb port.

in all cases you have to get a plan with a cellphone provider & yes your device has to be programmed for that provider or you are roaming.

Caution - these things can get very expensive if you roam or blow by your plan.

3g will give about 1mb of data flow - enough for email but video will be choppy at best. the 4g is supposed to do about 7mb. At home on my cable I get 10mb & that is enough to stream video.

curious how fast your internet is? http://speedtest.bhn.net/

or http://www.speedtest.net/ (hint don't water your time on the pre test - use the "begin test" in the middle - in green.