Internet Access.

Many motorcaravaners keep in contact via the Internet when traveling.

Some people use Internet Cafés exclusively, others use their own laptop computer and a GSM (including GPRS) phone. A very small number also use their laptop computer and a satellite phone to access the Internet.

Unfortunately many people fail to get their laptop computer and their GSM phone "system" to work reliably, particularly in out-of-the-way places.

(For information on maintaining a web site on the move see here.)

The Problems.

At a minimum most people would like to be able to send and receive e-mail, using their laptop computer and mobile phone, reliably and economically whilst on the move. To do this all the following bits of hardware, software, wetware (you) and services have to work.

• E-Mail Client Program (e.g. Outlook or Eudora).
• Operating System (e.g. Windows® 2000 or XP).
• The Software link (driver) to the phone.
• Laptop Computer hardware.
• The hardware link/cable between the computer and the phone.
• The phone.
• The local GSM network provider.
• Your ISP (or a local ISP).
• Your SMTP (sending) and POP/IMAP (receiving) server.
• The user (You).

Tip: Because of the complexity of sending e-mail via a GSM phone there are many circumstances where a simple "text" (SMS) message is more reliable and convenient. This is particularly true where the message is short or urgent. (More on this topic to follow).

E-Mail Client Program (e.g. Outlook or Eudora).

There are two ways of accessing e-mail on the Internet. One is to use a "proper" e-mail client program like Microsoft® Outlook (or better Eudora), the other is to use a web browser like Microsoft Internet Explorer (or better Firefox) and a web based e-mail system like Hotmail.

Web based e-mail systems are very convenient to use in Internet Cafés. However the extra (redundant) data transferred as part of each web page means that web based e-mail systems are not really economic to use via a GSM phone.

"Proper" e-mail client programs (Outlook, Eudora etc.) allow you to prepare outgoing e-mails and read incoming e-mails off-line. This is the type of program to use when sending and receiving e-mail via a GSM phone. To use this type of program you need an ISP (Internet Service Provider) who runs the appropriate servers (SMTP and POP/IMAP) for your e-mail client to connect to. Some ISPs (e.g. BT Yahoo!) allow you to access your e-mail both via a "proper" e-mail client program and via a web browser.

Tip: If your ISP does not provide web access to your e-mail this may be available (in an Internet Café) via Mail2web.

Although Outlook (or Outlook Express) is provided as part of Microsoft Windows® you may find it worthwhile to purchase an alternative e-mail client program like Eudora because:

• Outlook [Express] is the target of many viruses, trojans and worms.
• Eudora allows the concurrent rather than sequential sending and receiving of e-mail. This can substantially reduce your GSM phone "connect" time.
• Eudora allows you to download only the first (say) 5k of each e-mail message and then later either retrieve the remainder of the message or delete it without retrieving it. This can be very useful if somebody sends you a large unwanted e-mail or if you receive large amounts of spam.

Operating System (e.g. Windows® 2000 or XP).

Although you can use an operating system earlier than Windows®* 2000, I strongly recommend you use either Windows® 2000 or Windows® XP (whichever came with your laptop; in general it is not a good idea to upgrade your laptop from 2000 to XP). With the exception of Eudora, an anti-virus program and possibly a driver for your phone you do not need any additional software to send and receive e-mail. The less software you load on your laptop the more likely it is to work reliably. The CD provided by your ISP full of "essential" programs is for their benefit not yours. Don't use it. Everything you need is already in the operating system. Do not load any AOL tools. Turn off all automatic updates (you don't want anything other than your e-mail program using your expensive GSM phone connection).

The Software link (driver) to the phone.

In order to make a connection to your ISP via your GSM phone you may need a suitable "driver". This will either come from your phone supplier or from the supplier of the cable/link used to connect your laptop to your phone. This "driver" makes your phone look like a modem to your laptop. Some phones, mostly very simple ones, use Microsoft supplied "Standard Modems" instead of phone-specific software.

Some phone-specific software lets you manage your phone's address book and send SMS (Text) messages.

Tip: If your laptop has a built in modem you may want to disable this to avoid it being automatically selected whenever a GSM phone connection fails.

Your Laptop Computer hardware.

See here for information about selecting a suitable laptop computer. You do not need the latest fastest hardware! Reliability is far more important than processor speed.

The hardware link/cable between the computer and the phone.

Getting a laptop and phone system working reliably is hard enough without the added complication of an Infra-Red or Bluetooth link. A simple USB (or serial) cable to your phone may well save hours of frustration!

The phone.

There is no difference in data performance between a $20 second hand GSM phone bought without a SIM card on eBay (e.g. a Siemens C35i) and the latest all singing and dancing camera-video-MP3-PDA-colour-phone. But the simple phone with a hard wired connection will almost certainly work out of the box and you can afford to have a spare.

The local GSM network provider.

European GSM phones will, rather surprisingly, work in many parts of most countries in the world. To see where your specific phone will work you need to know the frequency capability of your phone and the name of your network service provider.

For example to find out if a Siemens C35i phone on the UK O2 network will work in Bayanhongor in Mongolia.

1. Establish the frequencies used by the C35i - GSM 900 / GSM 1800. (but not GSM 1900).
2. Determine the roaming partners of O2 in Mongolia on GSM 900 or GSM 1800 (if any).
3. Check the appropriate coverage map.

In some counties the GSM infrastructure only appears to support a limited number of concurrent data calls, so there are times when you can make voice calls to the UK but not data calls. The availability and reliability of data connections is dependant on the network used and it may be necessary to try all the available networks before you get a good connection. Although not backed by statistical evidence I think users of the UK O2 network do better than Vodafone and Orange users in the "Stans" and China..

Your ISP (or a local ISP).

In order to access the Internet from your GSM phone you need to connect (dial in to) to an ISP (Internet Service Provider). In order to collect your e-mail you need to "login" to the POP/IMAP server of the ISP that provides your e-mail address. Most people use the same ISP for both functions. You must collect your e-mail from the ISP that holds it for you, but you can connect to the Internet via almost any ISP, including one in the county you are in.

Assuming you have a UK network service provider (i.e. a UK SIM card in your GSM phone) and a UK ISP it is usually cheapest to call home (i.e. the UK) rather than try and use an ISP in the country you are in. There are exceptions and if you intend to remain in one country for a long time then it may be worth getting a local SIM card and a local ISP account. I only know of one country that automatically provides low cost Internet access to roaming GSM phone users, without account name or password and that country is Latvia (well done LV LTM GSM).

If possible you should time your calls to your UK ISP so that they are "off peak" preferably between 03:00 and 06:00 UK time. The very best data rate you can normally get with a standard GSM phone is 9600 bits per second.

Tip: It is worth having several accounts with different ISPs so that should one of them fail you still have an alternative. If you want the phone number of a free UK ISP please ask.

Your SMTP (sending) and POP/IMAP (receiving) Server.

The ISP that provides your e-mail address (e.g. Freeserve/Wanadoo) operates at least two "servers" (computers providing a service on the Internet) that your e-mail client program must use to send and collect e-mail. The names of these "servers" is required by your e-mail client program. Although these names are often set up automatically you should know them in case something goes wrong and you have set up your e-mail client manually. For example the names used by Freeserve/Wanadoo are:

• SMTP (Sending): smtp.freeserve.net
• POP (Receiving): pop.freeserve.net

The user (You).

Probably the weakest link is you! Setting up a laptop and GSM phone system can be complicated. A few years ago, after 20 years in the computer industry, I was paid a lot of money to do this sort of thing! Now everybody expects to get it working in a few minutes without reading the manual!

You should, of course, check that all your hardware and software works before you leave home. If you can not get it to work reliably in your front room then it won't work in Tibet! When it does work don't change your set up. Resist the temptation to add software or hardware to your laptop computer once you have set off.

Tip: If possible use a wired (USB/Serial) connection between your computer and your phone rather than Infra Red or Bluetooth (both of which add yet another unnecessary layer of complexity).

Tip: Make sure all your UK phone numbers are in international format (i.e. start +44).

Reducing the Cost.

Connecting to a UK ISP from (say) China using a UK SIM card costs about $1.50USA per minute. Sending a dozen assorted small e-mails will take about three minutes. Receiving the same number of e-mails another one minute and thirty seconds.

There are several things that can be done to reduce the "connect time" and hence the cost of sending and receiving e-mail.

1. Send simple "text-only" e-mails. When you send an e-mail that is "formatted" (i.e. contains things like different fonts, or bold, italic or colour) your e-mail client program actually sends the message twice! Once as text-only, without the formatting information (intended for recipients with text-only e-mail systems) and once with the formatting. This more than doubles the size of the e-mail message.
2. Don't copy incoming text when replying. Many people automatically copy all the incoming text when replying to an e-mail, as a result many e-mails contain a high proportion of redundant text. You should also tell your corespondents to do the same (perhaps as part of your "signature" automatically attached to each e-mail you send).
3. Send and receive simultaneously. Some e-mail client programs (e.g. Eudora) will send and receive e-mail simultaneously rather than sequentially. In the example above this will reduce the "connect time" from four minutes thirty seconds to three minutes.
4. Zip any attachments. If you must send file attachments (e.g. Word documents) then compress them with "Zip" first (this does not apply to already compressed file formats like JPEG images.)
5. Use a service like OnSpeed (see below).

OnSpeed - Does it work?

You may have seen services like OnSpeed being advertised as:

• Dial Up - 5x Faster, Broadband - 3x & GPRS - 8x Faster.
• 70% of the benefits of broadband at less than a tenth of the cost.
• Revolutionary new technology. Easy to install simple to use.

OnSpeed is a combination of software you run on your computer and a server operated by OnSpeed. The software works by diverting communication between your computer and (say) your ISP's e-mail SMTP and POP servers so that it goes via the OnSpeed server. This allows the software running on your computer to compress the data before sending it over the GSM phone network to the OnSpeed server. The OnSpeed server then decompresses it and forwards it to its original destination. The same process takes place in the reverse direction.

Because the OnSpeed software "knows" what type of data is being sent and received it can select the type of compression it uses. For example when downloading images from a web site OnSpeed can dramatically reduce the file size of images (and the quality). It is this sort of compression that is used to justify the "5x Faster" claims. You can of course switch off all images within your web browser instead.

The scope for such dramatic compression is far less with e-mail than with web pages but non-zipped e-mail text compresses well as does the data exchanged whilst negotiating a connection between your laptop and your ISP's SMTP and POP servers.

To test the effectiveness of OnSpeed I installed it on my Sony Vaio SR21K laptop and used it to send and receive batches of e-mails using my Siemens C35i GSM phone on the UK O2 Network. To accurately simulate conditions when traveling I re-sent typical batches of real e-mails and timed each session from connect to disconnect.

The results (averaged over several tests) whilst not as dramatic as "5x Faster" were impressive. My typical e-mail send and receive test "connect time" was reduced from 2 minutes 58 seconds to 1 minute 24 seconds (47%). If using GPRS and paying per KiByte (See here for a discussion on the difference between KiByte and kByte etc.) rather than by the minute the savings are even more significant as the amount of data transferred was reduced to 32%.

Given that OnSpeed costs only £2.00 UKP ($3.67USA) per month the potential savings are significant.

* Throughout this page I have only considered laptop computers based on the Intel Pentium or compatible processors running some form of Microsoft Windows, this is not because Apple or Linux based laptops are unsuitable but because I know very little about them.