Mobile Internet

The Mobile Internet series of blogs is intended as comparison and advice about mobile internet access options and prices (using cellular networks) in Europe. Maintaining an Internet business implies having internet access wherever you are :). That’s easy at home or office, but if you are traveling and not staying at a hotel or other place with internet access and are not keen on going around coffee shops with a laptop trying to find an open WI-FI, mobile internet is in my opinion your best option.

My cellular plan (in Slovenia) includes 1GB of data per month. Data only plans with one or 2 year contract cost about EUR 10-20 per GB which is quite reasonable. But when going abroad, the problem with mobile internet are exorbitant charges for GPRS roaming. In EU, the voice call roaming charges were regulated recently and are quite reasonable, but the data transfer charges are extremely overpriced: EUR 2 per MB or EUR 2,000 ($2,800) per GB of data! This means data roaming costs 100 to 200 (!) times more (or in percent: ten thousand to twenty thousand percent more) than at home! And that’s after regulation; previously prices were even higher! Hello EU regulators, anybody there?

So, data roaming being out of question, the only option is getting a local provider’s prepaid SIM with data or data only SIM. This is what I plan to do in Croatia soon…