Carlux

We live in France, but will be spending 4 months in Gordon's Bay , east of Cape Town, this winter. Not for the first time. We usually go for several months, and take 2 computers. We don't have smart phones, so don't have access that way, and are not prepared to send and read emails for that amount of time on a hand held device.

Although there are lots of hotels and restaurants with WiFi hotspots, we will be renting an apartment that doesn't even have a telephone, let alone Wifi. There haven't been in the past any hotspots near enough to use. (I don't want to have to go out for a coffee and drive 15 minutes every time I need to check mail, use Internet or Skype.)

Having investigated all the available options when we've been there in the past, for the last few years we have been sharing a Vodacom 3G modem, buying a SIM card and 'data bundles' from Vodacom. My memory is that we use 1 Gig or more per month, and that costs around 2500-3000 Rand. About 29 Euros when we were there. The Vodacom site does not give prices, and so it's not easy to get current rates, but I doubt they have gone down.

The difficulty is that this year one of the laptops doesn't have a slot for the 3G modem - which cost us about R2000 4 or 5 years ago. In order to get a 3G key we would have to buy the key, even more expensive, plus the SIM (really cheap) plus the data bundles.

We could be reasonable and do all our Internet access with the one laptop that already has the 3G modem, and that's an option.

I also suspect there may be an IPad in our future, which will need access.

My question is whether anyone knows of other possibilities for pay as you go options, but reasonably heavy access. We heard about 'abroadband.com' which advertises aggressive pricing for roaming most places in the world, but it's 0.59 Euros a megabyte - which would come to over 600 Euros for a gigabyte.

(Remember - we're not in North America, and so don't have access to those providers)

jeroenvm

The 3G devices are all USB nowadays, surely your laptop can handle that? Look into getting a CellC USB data stick with SIM, and topping that up as you go (with regular phone credit vouchers, unlike Vodacom) as it will probably work out much cheaper. CellC also has annual packages (R2000 for 5GB per month including USB stick) that may work our cheaper even if you do only use it half the year. Check the CellC site to see if there's 3G signal in your area first, it's still being rolled out: http://www.cellc.co.za/coveragemap.

Carlux

That sounds exactly what we want - the problem with Vodacom (2 years ago anyway) was that their USB data stick was about R2500. So yes, the new laptop will handle that - it just doesn't have the slot for the old fashioned modem. So it might be easier to chuck the whole Vodacom setup and go with CellC.- which gives you the stick plus 3 G for 799. We'll check it out when we get there.

Thanks for the help.

safarilover

I, too, spend several months a year in Gordon's Bay and use a USB Vodacom 3G device. It works well in that area and can be purchased from Game for about R400. When I was there in February, a 2GB data bundle cost R289--cheaper to buy a larger bundle than to buy several small ones. When you purchase data bundles, they are good till the end of the following month, so if you purchase them near the beginning of a month, they will last for almost 2 months. However, it is "use it or lose it." They don't carry over even if you add additional bundles. If you purchase cell phone time, it is important to convert it to data bundles because it is much cheaper when using the internet. If you are interested in directions on how to convert minutes to data bundles, let me know and I can email them to you.

Carlux

Thanks for the info. In fact I know about data bundles and 'use it or lose it' having already made those mistakes! I'll check to see what the Vodacom 3G device does cost now. We have used the modem for several years, and didn't replace it because it was too expensive. Maybe competition has come to Vodacom.

By the way, I see you are also going to Namibia - we're going for about 10 days in December, and it will be interesting to see what works there. For that length of time it's not really an issue, if we just get the South African bit sorted out.