How to get connected and watch movies on netflix, etc? Some of us want it just for fun, some of us will use it for travel and work. How to make it simple? Does it work? Is it expensive?
Let’s talk about your needs first. Do you need internet just to check whats around you, check email and weather? Most sites have internet available free of charge. It is super slow, so you won’t be able to stream anything, you will probably struggle if you want to post some pictures on facebook (unless you upgrade to some higher speed option for the price). If you are happy with that, you can stop reading.
Stream and make a video calls.
There are few different ways of doing that. Some of you will just use mobile phone to tether internet (so called hotspot). It is fine and good solution, unless you are in the area with bad signal or/and you like your phone with you and kids would like to use it in the van. First, get a sim card. If you want it all to be quite cheap, use that link to get your sim: http://aklam.io/bswxe8. This MVNO uses vodafone network, so the coverage is pretty good. On our last trip to Scotland and England, we found out it was the best. We had 4 different sim cards. Vodafone, EE, Three and O2. They were not exactly branded the same way as we used MVNO, but we found out this one was the best on a Mainland. What’s important, no data limit! If you use the above link, you have 50% off for first 3 months, so your internet connection in the van is only £12.5/mo. Yes! It worked!
Getting a mobile router
The easiest way to share that internet connection is… router. Yes, just very similar solution to that one at home, but this time it is mobile router. In our case, we both used the same setup. TP-Link M7350. You can get it on your favourite online shopping platform like Amazon or eBay, or local shop like Argos. We strongly recommend price match, as we found them much cheaper online.
I have a SIM, what’s next?
As you just purchased SIM for phone, not a tablet or dongle, please put it in to any mobile phone and: send a text to yourself, ring yourself for at least 10 seconds. Or ring anyone. It doesn’t really matter. It is all for the mobile network to create SIM profile in their systems. When done, please take this SIM out of the phone and put it in to our router. Wait about 5 minutes so router can pickup internet config. If nothing happened in last 5 minutes, turn it of and on again and wait another 5 minutes. Yes! Your router is now connected. No setup needed (at least for the SIM we recommend). Your WIFI name and password is in the manual. We strongly recommend installing TP-Link mobile phone app, to customise all settings. It is also handy, when 4G signal is low, but your router is still trying to get fast 4G internet when you have just one bar, and when you manually flip to 3G you may realise signal is much better, so as internet speed!
