Dear Wi-Fi…[part 1 of 2]

Wednesday, February 27th, 2013 Tom Truong, Product Manager

Dear Wi-Fi,

I’m sorry I ever doubted you. Please take me back.

With undying devotion,

Tom

It all started with a little SMS.

“Tu saldo es inferior a 2eur.” I understood after a bit of a double take: I had less than 2 euros on my mobile account.

Well, I certainly felt less than content when I got this notice a few hours after buying a prepaid sim here in Barcelona. The brochure had advertised 1 cent a minute to the US, so I figured 10 euros would be enough for a couple days of text and voice calls back home.

Back I went to the cellular store and the guy there shrugged his shoulders and said something vaguely about the fact that he “only activates these for different companies and sometimes it’s more expensive…” I’m paraphrasing generously here. He wouldn’t look at the account detail to explain how I used up $10 of credit with only a few texts and a handful of quick calls, and told me to take it up with the operator. “The speak English yes!” he assured me. After 5 mins of trying to find the English option, I gave up there and went to go create an account so I could better understand the relationship with my new mobile operator.

I had a bit more luck with the operator’s web portal–they offered English right on the first page, but kept defaulting back to Spanish every time I clicked on something. There was something about a tarifa, mi tarifa, that sounded promising…oh look what I found: listado de llamadas:

So up to the point where I thought buying a local sim would be even better than Google Voice and VOIP over Wi-Fi, I didn’t realize things could get so pricey without mobile data in the picture. There was probably some kind of fine print in the prepaid terms about how they’d charge me, but I’m pretty sure my lesson was cheap compared to others.

$1 for a single SMS

$2.50 for 3 misplaced calls

You can see how $10 was a drop in the ocean when you’re roaming internationally. What led me to even go down the prepaid sim route was the thought that perhaps someone couldn’t reach me in real time as I roamed with Wi-Fi. I’ve previously mentioned the decent iPass Wi-Fi coverage here in Barcelona—the next couple days have been even better because my phones started auto-connecting on their own to networks I’d visited, including a few free ones that I manually connected to previously.

So I think Wi-Fi might have forgiven me my temporary indiscretion. Earlier today, when I took a walk near the Museum of Art, I naturally took a few photos, and guess what showed up? More iPass networks.

So check out the moment I was able to share with my friends back home. Pretty amazing, right?

Part 1 of 2 parts…

Tags: roaming, wifi access