Do you just stick the SIM in your smartphone and tether it? Or do you have a WiFi dongle? Or something else?
I get a prepaid SIM card with data as soon as possible in each new country and use it as a personal hotspot (i.e. tethering). In most countries it works out to no more than $1/day, and it is good enough to get by.
Usually there is a limit to how much data you can use. A Skype video call blows through that data limit quickly. But if you avoid such things, then it is affordable, and a great backup.
Most places in South East Asia and East Asia where youâd actually want to be have good 3G infrastructure. Except:
- Myanmar (as of Feb 2015 forget about getting work done in this country at all if it requires Internet - sometimes whole cities are more or less off the Matrix for a day).
- China also is a difficult place to get much done - many of the sites you need will be blocked, VPN services are patchy in China at best, with your own SSL tunneling server you can just get by. I didnât even try to get a SIM card there, as Iâm sure it would be too difficult.
Other Asia stories:
- Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan: all have good, cheap, prepaid SIM cards on arrival
- South Korea: Most cafes, restaurants, and hotels have free, unprotected Wifi that is probably better than what you have in your house in your home country.
- Philippines: bad 3G (and Internet in general) in many places. So bad on one island, my girlfriend needed to wait until the rest of the island had gone to sleep at night until she could online with sufficient speed to get her work done.
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Funny thing here is that Iâve just felt it myself. We went for a small trip with family, for 3 days, Friday till Sunday, and the âserver is downâ SMS arrived right when we were at the farthest point in the forest! With no Internet connection to fix it. Had to pack things quickly and get back to the car⌠search the spot where 3G network is available.
The experience Iâve got: when travelling, things like this have to be automated. For the âserver is downâ case, I think it should do hardware reset on a server if no one fixed the problem, say, within 40 minutes⌠At least it will allow to enjoy the trip 
I just put the local SIM in my phone and tether it. I have an unlocked iPhone 5s, I tether via USB as via wifi quickly drains the battery. If you want to keep your existing SIM so people can call you, just pickup an old/cheap* Android phone for tethering.
I think 3G/4G hotspots (e.g. this) are a great idea if you need to get the whole family online, but then itâs a) another thing to remember to charge and b) you will be fighting with them for bandwidth.
*Itâs probably cheaper to get it there if you are heading to a non-Western country
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