Please forgive me for inquireing on a subject that must have been
discussed many times before in this group, but i have tried searching
without result.

We are heading for the inland waterways of europe, the first year
Germany, Holland, Belgium and maybe France.

We are looking for the cheapest way (of course)to read wheathersites,
send email, update our webpage and other useful internetdoings via our
Thinkpad-PC on board, on a regular daily basis e.g. 10 minutes pr. day.

In Denmark it is possible to get 512K-dataservices with unlimited
traffic via several providers for a reasonable price (around 25-30 euro
per month), but when using these outside the country prices rise skyhigh.

There must be providers in the above mentioned countries where it is
possible to get something similar om a monthly subscription basis, but I
can't find any.

Regards
Soren
S/Y Marie

SørenH wrote:
Please forgive me for inquireing on a subject that must have been
discussed many times before in this group, but i have tried searching
without result.

We are heading for the inland waterways of europe, the first year
Germany, Holland, Belgium and maybe France.

We are looking for the cheapest way (of course)to read wheathersites,
send email, update our webpage and other useful internetdoings via our
Thinkpad-PC on board, on a regular daily basis e.g. 10 minutes pr.
day.

In Denmark it is possible to get 512K-dataservices with unlimited
traffic via several providers for a reasonable price (around 25-30
euro per month), but when using these outside the country prices rise
skyhigh.

There must be providers in the above mentioned countries where it is
possible to get something similar om a monthly subscription basis,
but I can't find any.

Regards
Soren
S/Y Marie

As it is easy to connect via wi-fi at most European marinas, why not rely on
the Internet? The British Met Office site is vast and full of current info,
as is the German Wetterkarte site. Access to the 'net via mobile 'phone and
satellite phone is becoming commonplace on board ocean cruising yachts
underway, and sites like Weatheronline and numerous others are updated
daily.


Dennis.

SørenH wrote:
We are heading for the inland waterways of europe, the first year
Germany, Holland, Belgium and maybe France.

You will not find a single best provider for the whole of Europe and
interconnect charges are excessively high. The EC did have to regulate
to cap the most excessive rates, but you still want to use a national
provider in each country.
There are competitive offerings, but you might want to change operator
when you change country. As you'll stay a while in the same country this
should not be a big problem, though.

For example here an offering (Germany) for a 25Euro flat rate for
internet usage:
http://www.handys-mobile.de/base-internet-flatrate.html

Markus

On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:38:37 +0100, Markus Baertschi
wrote:

You will not find a single best provider for the whole of Europe and
interconnect charges are excessively high. The EC did have to regulate
to cap the most excessive rates, but you still want to use a national
provider in each country.

In the US there is widespread availability of WiFi internet. What
about Europe?

Wayne.B wrote:

On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:38:37 +0100, Markus Baertschi
wrote:


You will not find a single best provider for the whole of Europe and
interconnect charges are excessively high. The EC did have to regulate
to cap the most excessive rates, but you still want to use a national
provider in each country.


In the US there is widespread availability of WiFi internet. What
about Europe?

Plenty of it out there, mostly ****ing expensive.
Typically $2 - $4 per hour at current exchange rates and often really
slow and badly implemented. You *may* do better if you are in the same
place for several months. Then there's free wifi. Unless you stumble
upon a public spirited or just plain stupid resident with an open
domestic AP, its worth what you paid for it, Watch ~1 minute of ads for
5 mins access or have to renew your ip address every 5 minutes. Various
coffee shop & pub wifis out there. Need the day's (or hour's) voucher
'free' with your drink though.

Affordable Broadband packages over here are nearly all download capped,
rate limited, port blocked or over-contended. This has a knock-on
effect on grass roots open wifi.

I've got a decent cantennae and can typically get 10 access points in
any non rural location. Open ones are running at maybe 2%-3% of them.
The open APs are usually swamped by secured ones running high bandwidth
P2P stuff on the same channel and multipath bouncing off all the masts.
Approximately 1/3 of ports I visited last summer that I got the
computer out in had *some* free wifi. Thats over about 1000 NM around
the southern North Sea. I'm not even counting 'not a hope, just marshes
and a house or two on the horizon' harbours.

--
Ian Malcolm. London, ENGLAND. (NEWSGROUP REPLY PREFERRED)
ianm[at]the[dash]malcolms[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk
[at]=@, [dash]=- & [dot]=. *Warning* HTML & 32K emails -- NUL:
'Stingo' Albacore #1554 - 15' Early 60's, Uffa Fox designed,
All varnished hot moulded wooden racing dinghy.

Ian Malcolm wrote:
Wayne.B wrote:
In the US there is widespread availability of WiFi internet. What
about Europe?

There are plenty of WiFi hotspots. Most of them cost something, many
don't. Depends on the country. Their main problems is that the range is
short (100m) and they are more centered around railway stations,
downtown location etc. You'll be on the rivers and canals, too far away.

Freeriding is possible too, but depends on the country. Germany and
Switzerland is quite liberal, Frabce is almost impossible as the
providers ship the DSL routers with encryption enabled by default.

Interesting projects are fon.com, a worldwide wifi provider with plenty
of hotspots. If you join fon by providing a hotspot it's even free.

If you go that route your best friend will be some good wifi antennas.
You'll need a good omni and a good directional.

Markus