TELECOM 247

On 14 Oct 2003, phuile@yahoo.ca (Petre Huile) wrote:


A) big problem with staying (I assume in Hotels) is that they may be
charging a lot for calls, unless you can check in advance...

B) there are few local number ISP access services now in the UK, as
there has been a growth in dial-up for national coverage on a local
rate (0845) or unmetered free access number 0808xx...

The former set of numbers includes service from firms large and small
(some virtual ISPs piggybacked onto numbers/servers from a large
supplier and making smaller amounts of cash from the per-minute income
that is offered). Among them I recommend FreeUK www.freeuk.net which
is managed by Claranet, a medium/large ISP.

Since you will be connecting from a number of locations, and may have no
immediate knowledge of how long youll want to be online, you could look
at one of two flat fee services, using an 0808 and possibly free from
your room [double or treble check with hotels, get it in writing by
fax - keep a copy at home as well as with you, in case of exhorbitant
phone charges on your hotel bills!]

See http://www.mipcards.com/html/faqs.htm - fee is 10 pounds but offers
choices (A) 160 hours to be used within 30 days, or (B) 2000 minutes to
be used within 90 days. The former may offer you better value if youll
be here for just a short period and can get assurance of no/low fee for
using an 080899 phone number from the hotels.

As for wireless, BT has about 1000 OpenZone wireless hotspots
but I have no personal knowledge of costs, and they are primarily in
hotels, and travel terminii.

If you go for one of the MIPs cards, and only half use it, I might be
able to make use of the remainder, and pay (eg with PayPal) for the
unused portion, at least if you go for the 160 hours access :-)