Staying Connected While Cruising
Reviewing your options
Whether you need to stay connected for work or want to search for the best-ever margarita recipe, there are lots of options for staying connected while cruising in the Pacific Northwest. Given that the technology is constantly changing, the range of options can be hard to keep up with. Here’s a snapshot of what’s out there at the moment.
Smart Phones
I have an Apple iPhone and I love it both on and off the boat. When I am cruising I use the tethering feature to connect my laptop to the Internet (tethering turns the iPhone into a modem for your computer). I also use the iPhone to connect directly to check email and news. I also spent $10 on the Navionics marine app and now have a backup chartplotter—definitely the best 10 bucks I ever spent.
iPad
Rogers and Telus have iPad data (3G) plans so it is now the latest device that lets you stay connected while cruising. It also has built-in GPS and there are marine apps available for it (the reviews so far are favourable – to see an example of one check out the website Madmariner). Although I am attracted to the iPad, it does not replace my iPhone or laptop and for this reason I am still reluctant to buy one. However, the fact that it also functions as an ereader may eventually convince me to part with 600 bucks.
Android Phones
Android phones are phones that run Google’s Android Operating System (OS). Many phone companies are adopting this OS because it is open source which means that anyone can develop applications for it (no permission is required from Google who owns the Android OS) and potentially any smartphone manufacturer can use the Android OS if they choose to do so. The iPhone, on the other hand, is the only device that can run Apple’s proprietary OS made specifically for Apple devices.
The downside of Android phones for boaters, for the moment anyway, is that marine apps are new and still a big buggy. Given the variety of android phones out there, app developers face challenges in trying to accommodate differences between them—this means that Android app users may experience more quality issues than iPhone and iPad users running apps.
The Blackberry
This is the most widely-used smartphone amongst corporate users and still the best selling smartphone worldwide. However, there are no marine navigation applications for the Blackberry. On the other hand, if you have a Blackberry, chances are your company is paying for it and this makes it a great option for connecting to the net while cruising!
The way you connect to the Internet using your Blackberry depends on which company your data plan is with. The other thing to watch out for is that there are now some Blackberry phones running Android – so if marine apps are developed for Android at some point, Blackberry could potentially run them.
Internet Mobility Sticks
Mobile Internet sticks also allow you to connect your computer to the Internet using Rogers or Telus’s data networks. Rogers calls their device Roger’s Rocket Stick. Telus calls their device the Telus Internet Mobility Stick
The advantage of the stick over a smartphone in terms of connectivity is that although you can use the smartphone as a modem, download speeds are faster with the stick. I asked Rogers about download times with their stick versus iPhone download times. They said that their newest stick offered download speeds at about 21 MB per second (although in practise it is more like 10) while the iPhone working as a modem is more like 2 to 3 MB a second. There are currently no data plans that let you run one or the other device (a smartphone or stick) within the same plan. So, deciding between a rocket stick and a smartphone as modem will depend on how much time you spend connected remotely. Although I am a fairly heavy user, I will be sticking with my current data plan that lets me connect to the Internet using my iPhone as a modem and will put up with the slower connection speed.
How Big A Data Plan Do I Need? - The Data Calculator
I am lucky to be on an early data plan and so pay 30.00 a month for 6 GB. I am a relatively heavy user and I don’t come anywhere near needing the 6 GB (although watching a couple of hours of streaming video could completely change this.)
Rogers offers a data calculator to help you figure out how much data you need. I used it and answered the following questions to come up with .97 GB
Remember there are 1024 kilobytes (KB) in a megabyte (MB) and 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte (GB).
Here are some hypothetical numbers we entered:
- Emails sent and received (text only): 3085
- Emails sent and received with photos: 214
- Web pages viewed: 1092
- Songs downloaded: 16
- Software apps downloaded: 5
- Emails with attachments (excluding photos) viewed: 522
- Instant Text Messages sent and received: 712
- Minutes of streaming video viewed: 33
- Hours on online gambling played: 0
According to the calculator this is about .97 GB of data so I need a 1 GB plan.
To try the calculator yourself go to the Rogers website.
Network Coverage
Both Rogers and Telus sell and offer data plans for the iPhone, Blackberry and some Android phones. Based on the network coverage maps available on their respective websites, it looks like Telus has slightly better cruising coverage in Pacific Northwest cruising areas. Both companies boast HSPA (high speed packet access) networks which are touted to provide throughput similar to broadband wireline services.
Pricing Differences
I checked basic voice and data plans between the two companies and they are similar. Both have the annoying habit of promoting deals to new customers that are sometimes better than the deal you are locked into…so if you are a new customer looking for a voice data plan on contract, shop hard as that is your best time to negotiate. That is how I ended up with my 6 GB data plan for 30 bucks a month.
Customer Service
Both companies have their share of detractors who have had terrible experiences with them in the past. However, I have to say that the experience with both companies in the last year or so has improved tremendously. Not to say you won’t sometimes wait but in calls to both companies for this article, wait times were less than 3 minutes (after I punched in my response to many questions on their equally annoying call routing systems of course) and the representatives spoke good English and were polite and knowledgeable.
But I don’t want to pay for a Data Plan
You may not want to pay for a data plan all year round if you don’t have the need for mobile internet except for when you are cruising. With a laptop on board you still have lots of options – most marinas have hotspots that you pay for and many offer free wifi.
If you don’t want a data plan but want to be able to anchor out and surf the net you might want to look at the options below.
BBX
BroadbandXpress is a marine wifi provider with over a hundred marinas and ports where boaters can get high-speed access. The company offers a variety of plans including one-day logins. You can also purchase an antenna that allows you to access BBX hotzones for internet access while cruising or anchored.
Remember to log out when you are finished your BBX session so that you are not charged additional time.
More information on the BroadbandXPress website.
Wave Wifi
Another option for connecting while cruising is to purchase equipment that lets you connect your computer to wifi hotspots as far as 7 miles away. Wave WiFi offers a number of products for this purpose including Rogue Wave which consists of a piece of hardware that is both a wireless bridge and an Ethernet converter and is connected to your computer, and an antenna which is mounted on deck.
The cost is around $400 and you still need to pay for wifi hotspot access, unless of course you have good access to friends with wifi and a collection of passwords for free wifi.
More information on the Wave WiFi
My Gripe about Skype
Unfortunately you cannot use Skype over a cellphone data network. But I still have it on my iPhone as I use it when wifi is available.
So surf away while your cruising…but do remember to turn it off every once in awhile!