Overview
For many people having internet access when going abroad on holiday or travelling the world is becoming more of a necessity. Unfortunately the costs can be extremely high. With unsuspecting mobile internet users coming back home to bills in the £1000’s.

The title of a recent article in a UK newspaper:

 ‘Britons abroad charged 1,000 times UK rate to surf the web’

Sadly this is no exaggeration!

For example, Three (UK) charges £7.50 a month in the UK for 1GB of data. If you travel to Canada and use 1GB it will cost over £10,000....ouch

In Europe, officials have put a cap on the amount international data roaming users can be charged by mobile network operators inside the EU. Currently the maximum limit is set at €50. This will stop the large bills, but it doesn’t help much if you’re travelling outside of the EU or require a greater data allowance.

At best €50 will only pay for about 40MB of data, which isn’t much. This amount of data can easily be used in one day by doing some general surfing and emailing.

As a rough guide 1MB equates to about 5 minutes of basic web surfing or emailing. Obviously if your emails have attachments or start downloading files (e.g. MP3, YouTube etc) the amount of data you use will increase very rapidly.

How to get cheap internet access
Getting cheap mobile internet access abroad is really very simple, just buy a SIM card local to the country you’re visiting. Most mobile networks operators provide data SIM cards on a Pay As You Go \ pre-pay basis, which is ideal for holiday makers and travellers.

There’s nearly always a mobile phone shop at international airports which will sell data SIM cards. The big advantage of buying at the airport is most shop staff speak English which can save a lot of time if you don’t speak the local language.


Getting connected
If you already have a modem or mobile WiFi device you will need to get it unlocked before using it with a SIM card from another network. To unlock your modem simply go to our home page and either select the modem manufacturer using the menu on the left or do a search (top right) for the model.

Armed with an unlocked modem and a local pay as you go SIM card, cheap mobile broadband is yours for the taking. No more worries about large bills or constantly monitoring the amount of data used!


Tips:

 Overview
The Huawei E353 is a new breed of budget USB modem capable of download speeds reaching 21.6Mbps and upload speeds up to 5.76Mbps. These speeds can only be achieved (theoretically) when using the latest HSPA+ mobile networks.

The E353 uses the latest Qualcomm 8200a chipset which features network enhancements to provide a better mobile broadband experience while on the move.

The modem is backwards compatible with older network technologies, including HSUPA, HSDPA, HSPA, UMTS (WCDMA) and GSM/EDGE.

The E353 has a CRC9 connector for attaching an external antenna.

There is the option of attaching a strap to to the modem so the lid covering the USB connector and modem stay together....very useful.

Review
For our tests we used the E353 supplied by Three (UK) and also used the Three network.

Speed
Unfortunately the area we tested the modem does not have HSPA+ coverage. So we were unable to use the modem to its full capacity. However we were able to test the modem on HSDPA (theoretical maximum speed of 7.2Mbps) and it was fast, averaging just over 5.5 Mbps for downloads. Using Three's E353 predecessor (ZTE MF112) in exactly the same area running the same speed tests we only managed to get a maximum of 1.5Mbps.

** Update **
We've now managed to test the modem on a HSPA+ network and achieved a maximum download speed of 14.6Mbps. Thats about 1.8MB/s download, which is considerably faster that most UK home users fixed ADSL connection!