All Day Internet – avoiding roaming charges while travelling

On my last couple of trips to the Balearic Islands I have used an All Day Internet mifi device rather than roaming on my phone.

It is a mobile wifi thing that you just pop in your bag or your pocket, which can connect to five devices at once – so that is already much better than roaming. I use it with my iPad and laptop as well as the phone. And a couple of friends connected it to their phones when we were in Ibiza too – very handy for tweeting photos on the boat over to Formentera.

So how does it work?

You just order it online before you go and it is delivered by courier to your hotel, apartment, friend’s house of wherever you happen to be on the day you arrive – in my experience this has been in the early evening. You can track the delivery status online.

You just switch it on and then look for the All Day Internet connection in your settings on your phone or computer, just like connecting to any wifi network. You are given a password with the device, which you enter to get connected. And that’s it.

In the package, you also get a prepaid, addressed box to return the device at the end of your trip – the company is based in Santander in Spain but operates all over the world. All you have to do it is put it in the box and post it or ask the hotel where you are staying to do it for you.

At Palma airport the first time I had one in April, I had a bit of a problem as the letter box was one of those lion’s head ones, and the lion’s mouth was a bit narrow to get the box in, so I really had to jam it in, squashing it a bit, but it got back to All Day Internet okay. Last week, I just left it with the hotel receptionist to avoid the squashing!

The connection is pretty good most of the time, although in Ibiza it was sometimes slow – but this is a problem with the internet in Ibiza in general I think.

You sign up for a certain amount of data, and once you’ve used 50%, you get an email letting you know, so you can decide whether you want to use it a bit less or buy more.

The battery lasts about three to six hours, depending on how much you are using it obviously, so it is a good idea to order a spare battery too.

So how much does it cost?

It costs from €5 a day with no extra postage charges if you book 15 days in advance.  It might sound a lot but I’ve found it much cheaper than roaming and of course you can connect all your stuff, not just your phone.

It proved really worthwhile on my last trip as I was changing hotels nearly every day and the wifi connection was hopeless or slow in quite a few of them – not to mention the faffing about with endless usernames and passwords. I just wouldn’t have been able to do more than send a few emails if I hadn’t had it. So I could actually work as well as posting stuff on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and would definitely recommend it.

Have a look at All Day Internet to find out more.