Ok, we are cruisers, and we are supposed to be watching the clouds, catching fish, using the sup board or enjoying a sundowner. Truth is, we are bandwidth hogs. We need to order stuff, get YouTube videos about how to fix stuff, figure out the weather, follow the news, check our investments, and keep up with our friends. And then there is the blog with all its photos. Of course after dinner, we wouldn’t mind streaming a video on Netflix. Catching some NPR on Sunday morning from our home town feels kind of cozy. We want bandwidth.
What we used to do:
T-mobile’s international plan came highly recommended so we gave them the extra $50 per month. 4 lines came to about $170 per month. We would use our hotspots and things seemed to go swimmingly but after about 4 months we got a sweet text from T-mobile telling us that roaming was actually a privilege (despite the fact that we were giving up $50 per month) and they were canceling the offending lines in 30 days.
We also had a Wirie antenna. This is a router and external antenna. This worked pretty well and gave you the option of connecting to a local wifi hot spot or a 4g cellular tower using a sim card. One of our T-Mobile lines was this sim card. Unfortunately, most Wi-Fi hotspots are secured and their antennas are indoors making reception difficult. And the sim card became part of our T-Mobile problem. Wirie is now out of business, too bad it was a good product.
So this year we are on to plan B:
We parked our phone numbers with Google voice. Twenty dollars to transfer the number, then free, and while this does not allow international VOIP calls, our friends and family can text or leave a message on the same old number and we will be notified by email and through the voice app. While in the US we can forward to the sim we are using at the moment.
We use a local telephone sim card in our unlocked phones. Here in Mexico we get most of a month for about 200 pesos, 12 dollars for each of us. enough voice and casual data for us when we are away from the boat.
Enter the sky roam. This is a little hockey puck. Designed for frequent business travelers. You basically plug it in, or it will run on batteries for most of 24 hours 6000mah. The batteries can actually be used to recharge your cell phone if desired. We don’t do that. Turn it on for the first time and go to the website where you need to buy some time. The charge is $9.95 per day, or $99 per month. We do the $99 making our total Cell Bill roughly $124 per month a $35 savings. Once its turned on, and provided you have purchased some time, The little light on top of the gizmo swirls for about 1 minute and finally you see a white ring on top of the device. The swirling means its busy picking out the best cellular signal to latch on to. You don’t care what carrier, the gizmo does it all. There is no need to buy a sim card. When the swirling stops, you connect the same way you would to any wi-fi, the password is on the bottom of the gizmo. You are ready to go for up to 5 devices. We often stream a couple of hours of Netflix with no problems. When we travel, the Skyroam is better than most hotels, and all Marinas. Marina Wi-Fi is always in the brochure and is universally abysmal. And while we don’t do it, its easy to carry this hot spot with you.
As part of the Panama Posse We used the Line app to make phone calls via the sky roam and the calls were clear. I am certain that other VOIP apps would also work.
Order a Skyroam for your boat here
Demo of the Skyroam
