Internet Access using a Mobile Phone.
For the past 5 years I have mainly got weather forecasts from the internet, using a mobile phone with Italian and Greek SIMs tethered to a tablet computer – originally a Zaurus and now a Nokia N810. In Greece I have used a Cosmote ‘Cosmokarte’ and a Wind ‘F2G’ card and I now have two of each.
This page originally explained how to use the Cosmote ‘My View’n’Web’ service, which was discontinued in June 2010 and offered 40MB a month for 5€! With the proliferation of mobile devices there are now far more data bundles available with much higher volumes. ‘Dongles’ are also widely available, which are much easier to use with ordinary laptops.
My experience over the past 4 years in Greece is that Cosmote has the best coverage – in remote places it is sometimes the only service available. Vodafone is next best, but I’ve never used it because they havn’t offered cheap data deals. Wind comes third for coverage.
Wind used to be much easier to use, but these days Wind and Cosmote are very similar. Cosmote now even has English webpages! Wind data bundles still, in 2012, tend to be cheaper and in the past they’ve had some excellent offers.
In 2012 I’ve been using both:
COSMOTE Internet Monthly Pass 60 – 60MB for €3.
Talk & Surf 300 – 300MB for €8.50. (This is with an iPad.)
These deals change often, so check their websites. Some, like the Cosmote one, are simple one-off purchases. Others, like the Wind one are monthly subscriptions which renew until to cancel them.
You might also find informtion on data access in Greece see the PrePaid GSM Europe forum, and in particular the Greece (prepaid and postpaid offers) thread – though as mobile data has become more mainstream this site has become less valuable.
Tethering a laptop and a mobile phone/modem
Using a mobile as a modem to access the internet is known as ‘tethering’. It is potentially a complicated subject – it can be tricky to set up, though once set up it is easy to use. There are some advantages over using a ‘dongle’ – which is just a pre-configured mobile phone modem: better reception, lower power consumption, and the ability to lock onto an operator – important if, for example, you’re using a Greek SIM in Turkey.
There are broadly two methods of tethering:
1 Use the software supplied by the phone supplier. I use Nokia mobiles exclusively and they have ‘PC suite’ which runs under windows which will handle the connection.
2 Set up a dial-up (PPP) connection. This works with any computer and operating system but requires some knowledge of Access Point Names (APNs), usernames, passwords, and possibly proxy servers. This is too complex and variable to deal with here: google for your type of phone and ‘tethering’. All Linux computers support PPP.
iPad
We’ve used the Wind SIM in an iPad – it was the only one that had a small chip that could be cut down. We found that some weather apps used only small amounts of data – less than the equivalent webpage. You have to move the SIM in a phone to subscribe or to cancel the bundle because you can’t send SMSes from the iPad. (It might be possible to maintain the account online, but I’ve not tried.)
Weather Sites
The main sites I use are (examples):
http://weather.gmdss.org/navimail/GMDSS_METAREA3-E_INMARSAT
http://www.windfinder.com/forecast/leros
http://www.meteo.gr/sf.asp?sea_id=6
http://www.meteo.gr/cf.asp?city_id=190
which is also available in English (usually for a shorter period):
http://www.meteo.gr/cf_printEN.asp?city_id=190
Poseidon Wind Maps
Poseidon publishes wind forecast maps covering 5 days or so, e.g. for the Southern Aegean at:
http://www.poseidon.hcmr.gr/sailing_forecast.php?area_id=saeg
Here are some things I’ve learnt about these.
The URL of a single map is like this:
http://www.poseidon.hcmr.gr/images/meteo/2010/06/19/saeg/saegwindb10062012.png
where 2010/06/19 is the date on which the forecast was generated, and 10062012 is the date and time (1200 UTC – 3hr intervals) of the forecast itself.
They are for all Greece (gr), south Aegean (saeg), north Aegean (naeg), the Cyclades (cycl), the Dodecannese (dod), and the Ionian (ion).
The forecasts are usually generated daily (sometimes not at the weekend for some reason) so the latest ones are contained in a directory dated yesterday. They are not updated during the day.
If you’re on a limited bandwidth you can pull out the forecast dates & times you need – without accessing the Poseidon site and incurring all the extra bandwidth. The map jpegs are quite small – about 40kb. Or you can use the site in the normal way and save some of the forecast maps for the next few days.
(I have a BASH script which uses WGET to download the next n days forecast maps. If you use Linux and want a copy – you’ll need to customise it – then contact me.)
Updated 23-5-2012
