Greece GPRS?
 

I'm going to Greece for 3 weeks, and am going to need some kind of data access. I suspect there won't be much wifi where I'm going, so that leaves GPRS. Any suggestions for GPRS data providers for large amounts of traffic (few MB per day)? I've got a UK Virgin SIM at £5/MB, and a Greek TIM (now WIND) SIM which I think does GPRS but can't find the prices.

I notice both Vodafone and WIND are doing unlimited GPRS contracts. I'm guessing it won't work, but what's the minimum term on a contract?

Otherwise Vodafone are doing 4.3EUR/MB if you buy a 10MB card, which is better. Is there any other networks worth considering? Particularly any that work by roaming. I've heard of WIND Italia but it seems they're not cheap any more - any others?

The best offer currently available is what I, and thousands of other techno-freaks in Greece, currently use and there is no other service like that offered by any other provider.
It's called WIND Plus non-stop. It is a service that gives you unlimited WAP access with 3,49 Euro per month. It is marketed as a service that offers you unlimited access to the WIND Plus portal but it actually allows you to surf the whole internet unlimited. This can be done using your phone's browser, Opera mini or even by tethering your phone to a computer and using the settings that I'm copying below.

Moreover, WIND also allows you to access the internet with the same settings even without the Plus non-stop option. In that case they will charge you a WAP access ticket of 42 cents, every time you initiate a GPRS session (maximum session time 24 hours, i.e. you can keep the session open for an entire day and be charged one "access ticket", after the first 24 hours, the session won't be interrupted but a second ticket will be charged and so on).

The WIND plus non-stop option with 3,49 Euro per month is the best choice and the WIND plus pay-per-access scheme is also good if you're planning to stay for less than 9 days and willing to keep your WAP session up and uninterrupted whole day long!

In order to activate WIND plus non-stop on a WIND prepaid you have to SMS the word "PLUS" to 349 and the service will be activated for the next 30 days, after which you have to send this SMS again. In order to activate the service 3,49 Euro will be deducted from the prepaid balance of the account. For contract (postpaid) subscribers the WIND plus non-stop option is activated at WIND stores.
Nothing more whatsoever is charged for data usage on your account after that, provided that you're always using the WIND Plus access point (gwap.b-online.gr)!

The WIND plus settings can be automatically downloaded from www.wind.com.gr to your phone (make sure you're always using the WIND plus profile and NOT the WIND Internet one which charges by kb, many users actually delete the WIND Internet profile from their phones to avoid accidental charges).

In order to use the WIND plus service with a computer tethered to your mobile phone, you have to enter the following settings to your computer:
access point "gwap.b-online.gr", username "wap", password "wap" for your cellphone's PC suite and you also have to set the following proxy server on your web browser IP: 192.168.200.10 port: 9401 as well as on the windows connections panel (for IE and MSN Messenger).

I have used that with a Nokia N70 tethered to my PC through Bluetooth and USB and the Nokia PC Suite and it worked perfectly. Under 3G coverage it had speeds up to 200-250 kbps! It worked excellent for browsing, emails and MSN Messenger for me!

If you pay your account (for prepaid subscribers) with a WIND Bonus American Express card the WIND Plus non-stop service is offered free of charge, also the service is offered free of charge on the WIND MAX postpaid plan (for all users regardless of account payment method).

There is also the WIND 1 postpaid plan which has no monthly fee and no commitments. It has the same charges as prepaid but it is postpaid. I don't think it would interest you, it's just an interesting option for people staying longer in Greece but not long enough in order to sign-up for a "real" postpaid plan but are also too lazy to buy prepaid vouchers. On WIND 1 (unless you're paying using WIND Bonus AM.EX.) you have to pay 3,49Euro per month for WIND Plus non-stop.

There is one drawback to the service though, which is not such a big problem for everyday internet usage:
No single entity above 1MB in size is allowed for download. This means that you can surf the web, check your emails (but not download attachments larger than 1MB in size) and chat on MSN Messenger through WIND plus but you cannot download files that are larger than 1MB as these will be blocked by the above mentioned proxy server. Using WIND Plus on my laptop for almost a month when I was away from a fixed ADSL connection I have to admit that the 1MB file size limitation has never been a problem!

In this case and if a file download is absolutely necessary, you can still use the WIND-Internet profile "gint.b-online.gr" which charges per kilobyte (the charge is about 0,0014 Euro per kilobyte). I used that to download the online upgrade for my phone's software which was 2MB in size, it cost me about 3 Euro...

Visit www.wind.com.gr (where you can also request for automatic settings to be SMSed to your mobile) and www.windplus.gr where more information is available regarding mainly the WIND Plus portal but also the WIND plus non-stop option for unlimited WAP access. You can also check whether 3G coverage is available in the area you're visiting (some islands are covered too!)

If you're looking for a WIND prepaid SIM (in case you don't have one already) these are widely available with 5 Euros at virtually any kiosk around Greece and at WIND stores. The prepaid card gives you 1 Euro credit on activation plus 1 Euro credit per month for the next 4 months provided that you recharge your account balance at least once during the month. This means that if you recharge your account at least once a month (cheapest WIND recharge voucher available is 3 Euro) you will get 5 Euro of credit back in five months (matching the initial cost of the prepaid package)!

Thanks, that's excellent! Just the sort of thing I wanted!

A few questions:
I've already got a TIM Free2Go SIM. Assuming it still works (last used in Greece in Oct but I sent a text from the UK in Feb to try to keep it alive), that should now be a WIND SIM?

Is it possible to find out where the 3G sites are (Kifissia and Kefalonia is mostly where I'm interested)?

I'm in Greece once or twice a year. If I use the WIND postpaid plan will that stop my number expiring? How does the postpay work - can I do it on the internet by credit card, for example, or do I need a bank account?

When using the WAP option, what network access do you get? HTTP, HTTPS? Are any other ports accessible? Does it use SOCKS or per-port proxying? I use SSH quite a bit, and have an SSH server on the HTTPS port (port 443). Is the proxy likely to let me through? What's the latency like?

In order to keep your SIM alive, you have to recharge at least once a year, sending an SMS won't help. I think it should still be alive, a year hasn't passed since October.

On the wind.com.gr website you can check the coverage in the places you visit. Kifissia is definitely covered by WIND 3G (together with the whole of the Athens Metropolitan Area), Kefalonia seems to be 2G only on the official map although these things change.

For a postpaid plan you have to visit a WIND store. If you pay by credit card it would be very easy to get a contract, although I don't know if a greek tax-number (AFM) is a prerequisite for a postpaid account... If it is, you can get one with a simple application at a local IRS office (Eforia in greek). You don't need a bank account, and since you are an EU citizen, the only thing they'll ask for is your credit card! Don't let them sign you up for WIND Flexy zero, that's the no-monthly-fee program they're promoting but it has some downsides. If you do decide to go postpaid, ask for WIND 1, this is the program that will keep your number alive forever without any payments whatsoever, if you don't use it!

The WIND 1 postpaid program actually will never expire and since it has no monthly fees you can keep your number for ever with 0 Euro!
But anyway a prepaid recharged at least once a year will do the job! Unfortunately WIND doesn't offer online recharge for their accounts, you can always buy a couple of vouchers when you leave Greece and use these to recharge when abroad in order to keep your number alive! If you're visiting Greece twice a year, I don't think you even have to bother recharging from the UK!

Latency is very low when surfing with your phone tethered to your computer! To me (having used it for web browsing, checking email with Outlook and chatting on MSN Messenger) it worked (under 3G coverage) almost as good as with a fixed DSL line! The whole experience works quite fine. HTTP and HTTPS do work (from personal experience), MSN Messenger works too! I don't know if they're forwarding per port or using SOCKS but I do think that the proxy will let your SSH connection through since it is on the HTTPS port which goes through! I suspect it is per-port forwarding though... I really don't remember if it worked for Google Earth, but anywayz I have no clue on the ports that Google Earth works on!

That's all... Just bring your Free2Go SIM with you, download the settings on your phone (from www.wind.com.gr) and the settings on your computer (the ones I gave you above), text "PLUS" to 349 (having at least 3,49 Euro in your account for the fee) and you're ready to go with unlimited surfing for the next 30 days! Oh, and by the way, download Opera Mini on your mobile, if you can't do without internet access at any given time!

Just to give you a clue about the other companies, they only offer either per kilobyte charge for prepaid and postpaid or monthly data plans with some MB included but these are expensive and only available on postpaid.

I do think Vodafone offers a prepaid plan for their Vodafone Mobile Connect Card, but you have to buy the card and their charges are high and per kb...

Let me add that WIND Mobile TV links are available on the internet so you can watch mobile TV free of charge with TIM!

Recorded programs (like shows, weather etc.) are available on 3G only.
Live TV programs (including all majore Greek channels, MAD music chanel, CNN, ERT Sat and Fashion TV) are also available on 2G.

This is free of charge if you have the appropriate links to be found here:
http://www.myphone.gr/forum/showthre...16#post1119216

In order to use this service you have to download the WIND-Streaming profile (available on www.wind.com.gr).

Forgot to mention that I am not sure if WIND offers 3G access on its prepaid SIM cards... That could be a small problem and may lead you to go to the Greek IRS, get a greek tax-number and sign up for the above mentioned postpaid program (WIND 1 with no monthly fees)...
Kefalonia doesn't seem to have 3G coverage anyway (if you trust the official maps on their site)...

Did a little research about 3G on Wind prepaids.
It seems that WIND after being the first operator to offer 3G services back in 2003 (it was Telestet back then, then became TIM and now WIND), hasn't still offered 3G access to its prepaid subscribers.

Rumours on greek fora say though that users have started seing 3G access on their mobiles and started to be able to make video calls which means that Wind is expected to launch 3G services to its prepaids in the coming days (probably since they want to link the launch of the service with their new name)...

Thanks, that's really helpful! I'll print all this out and take it with me. I need an ΑΦΜ tax number anyway so I might as well go for the postpaid option. This really saves me quite a lot of money :)

You're welcome!

Fresh news:
3G is available as of today to all Wind prepaid subscribers!
Users in greek fora expect some kind of an offer for videocalls to be announced later today. The Wind plus non-stop offer is always available to all Wind subscribers (prepaid and postpaid).

Hi there,
Reading your post you sound very knowledgeable, whereas I on the other hand am not and know next to nothing on this topic. I'm coming to Greece June 30 for a month and want to bring my laptop to stay connected with work.
I feel totally lost as what I have to do to get the internet going. I know you explained it in detail above but I was hoping you could answer a few questions and provide any other helpful info.
Do I have to buy a cell phone to connect and if yes what kind do I have to buy? I only plan to go to Greece every 2 years so I don't need a cell with all the bells and whistles but something that will work well. Can I use a house line to connect? I will be in Markopoulo, Porto Rafti and Crete, Hania. Do you know if they have coverage there.
What is Opera mini? I'm not sure if I need it. You mention the cost is 3,49 Euro per month. If I'm using a cell phone line is there air time charge as well. Once again not sure how that works. Do I need to download anything on my computer before I come?
Sorry if these questions sound dumb but I'm just trying to learn as much as I can so I don't bring my laptop all that way for nothing.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi there!
Basically you do need a cellphone that can be connected to your computer and function as a modem. So try to find the cheapest phone that does that, probably all phones will do that.
If you want 3G speeds (300K) you have to buy a 3G phone. Cheapest one will cost you some 120 Euro (Samsung Z150 is a very good deal for a 3G phone). http://www.e-cosmote.gr/cosmote/esho...ategoryId=null

Markopoulo and Porto Rafti (and whole of the Athens Metropolitan Area) is covered with 3G by WIND which offers the above mentioned service. The same for the city of Chania in Crete. You can find their 3G coverage on their site www.wind.com.gr under "Coverage".

3,49 is a flat rate for data and you won't pay anything more provided that you always use the gwap.b-online.gr access point and proxy servers on your laptop's WAP settings. You'll pay for any minutes you talk on your phone, but if you use the above mentioned (Wind plus non-stop) offer, you will only be charged 3,49 Euro per month for any data usage...

Now if you buy a mobile phone you will probably also get a connection cable and a CD-ROM with the appropriate programs to connect your phone to your laptop and go online.

As far as fixed lines are concerned now, you can always use these either with ADSL (if the houses where you go do have ADSL which is a long-term service so you can't activate it just for yourself if the owners of the house don't want it because it requires a one year contract, although it actually costs a mere 10 Euro per month for 24 Mbps and takes about a month to activate so you have to see into that before you come to Greece) or you can use them for dialup connections with speeds up to 56K (that's ooooold and slooooow but always works fine for email and a little occasional browsing) paying something like 2 eurocents per minute using any of the "Free" dialup services. For example you can use "Tellas Free internet", using 8015005000 as your dialup number, and the word "tellas" as the username and the password. www.free-internet.gr

Now if you use a mobile phone with a WIND SIM card (prepaid or postpaid) and the WIND PLUS NON-STOP option, you will get unlimited surfing for one month with 3,49 flat rate. The speeds will be about 64K on 2G network (nationwide) or up to 300K on the 3G network (your places of interest are covered) or even up to 3,6 Mbps if you have an HSDPA-enabled 3G mobile phone (which are quite expensive)... Note though, that the WIND PLUS non-stop servers actually pose a 1MB size limit per file you download while surfing on the flat-rate tariff! So this tariff is best suited for email, chat and web browsing but not for downloading large files and large attachments (larger than 1MB)...

Opera Mini is a java web browser that can be installed on any mobile phone that supports java applications and with that you can surf the internet on your mobile. It's quite useful when you're out and about without any access to a computer and want to surf the web or check some web-based email on the go.

Besides that, if you live close to someone who is stupid enough to have their home Wifi connection unlocked (quite usual nowadays) you can always "steal" some of their high-speed bandwidth and you can always surf on public WiFi hotspots at sea-ports, airports, hotels and cafes (like Starbucks). And in emergencies, you can use any fixed line for dialup!

So bring your laptop with you. Buy an inexpensive phone that can connect to your laptop and function as a GPRS (or even better as a 3G) modem. Get a WIND prepaid SIM from any tobacco kiosk in Greece, pop it in to your new mobile, connect the mobile to your laptop through the provided cable and software, do the appropriate settings for WIND PLUS (APN access point and proxy servers as mentioned above), activate the WIND PLUS NON-STOP offer by sending the sms to the number I mentioned above, and you're ready to go!
And if for any reason this doesn't work you can always use the fixed line at the house you're staying to go online with dialup (2 eurocenta per minute and the outdated speed of 56Kbps) or go to a place where a public WiFi hotspot is available -provided that your laptop has a wifi card- and go online from there!

Are you sure about this last statement? Until fairly recently all the mobile operators insisted on seeing your tax declaration for the last year or at the very least some form of documentation proving your income is above a certain amount (e.g official declaration from your employer).

Has something changed recently? Is this specific to WIND?

Since 2002 I have made two contracts for myself (I don't have a tax declaration because I still don't pay any taxes), I was there when two friends of mine signed their contracts (they were foreign students so neither of them had a tax declaration form) and all of us paid using a credit card.

They never even asked for a proof of the tax-number (AFM)... As soon as you give them a credit card, they don't ask for your tax declaration and you get an online credit approval in seconds.

If you wish to pay in any other way except for credit cards then they ask for a tax declaration form and proof of your AFM, if you don't provide them with a tax declaration then the situation on credit approval varies between the providers. Vodafone usually gets back with a positive approval in two hours from the time you went to the store while WIND usually gives the approval again in some minutes! It has happened to a friend of mine who comes from an asian country, is studying in Greece, doesn't pay taxes and doesn't have an income and also doesn't have a credit card! At Wind (back then Telestet) he got the approval in three minutes without any of the above (just his passport) and at vodafone he got the approval for his line in three hours, and that's back in 2003. I think now things have gotten even easier. I don't think they ask for any of the above mentioned proofs of income any more, a lot of university students sign postpaid contracts without credit cards all the time!

...and please let us know here how you get on. I'll be sailing from Italy to Greece soon, so I'd be interested in your experiences - particularly with GPRS on the islands.

Dave

My recent experience with WIND plus non-stop:

Last week I was in Larissa at my parents' house where they finally decided to get ADSL but when I was there they had just applied the previous day and waiting for activation...

Dialup was just stepping on my nerves so I connected my laptop to my sony ericsson, I put the proxy settings on Opera and IE and there it went surfing and chatting on MSN with 3G speeds! It was fantastic! It would even reach some 300 Mbps!

And then I went to our cottage on the Thessalian beach of Velika (no 3G there from Wind, only Cosmote...) where we don't even have a fixed phone and I surfed from our patio on 2G speeds and it went just fine (even if we had a fixed line, the fastest thing available there on the beach is ISDN)! It worked smoothly enough in order for me to open 10 news articles and some 10 threads on my favourite fora simultaneously and read them while chatting on MSN Messenger and while all my neighboors and especially their kids who were missing their home internet connection would gather around me and seemed quite amazed that I was surfing from there while begging me to let them surf on the internet or let them connect their laptop on my cellphone! That was quite irritating I can admit!

It is also amazing that 2G GPRS seems to work really faster than dialup with a fixed phone line!

Just plain delight! I was so excited!

EDGE? :rolleyes:

No, I don't think so... My Sony Ericsson W880i doesn't do EDGE... Probably I was excited just to have internet access down there at the beach and everything seemed so perfect :-P

It seems that dialup service is just crappy at my parents' house! They got ADSL up and running today hurrah! (But I'm not there and they don't bother connecting the modem themselves...)

Aircards can be used
 

I sit worth me purchasing an unlocked aircard....I already have a cell phone with an COSMOTE number, so I would have to get a new SIM card to utilize with my laptop. Which way is the best?

Experiences
 

I got back from 3 weeks in Greece yesterday... time to relate my experiences:

I already had a TIM SIM - dropped it into my phone (a Nokia 6820) in the airport and up popped 'WIND GR' on the display. Last topped it up in October and it was making calls fine. I had about EUR 5 balance left.

Next, text PLUS to 349. No problems, WIND Plus enabled. I then set up the phone to do WIND WAP as described here, and it worked! AFAICS I've not been charged any more for the use of data.

First thing to note: Bluetooth phones are very handy. GSM signals don't seem to go through reinforced concrete buildings very well, with the result that often in the middle of the building the phone shows <25% signal. This causes GPRS to be slow, break up, or not work at all. In most cases I got 80-100% signal on the balcony on one side of the buildings I was in, so I left the phone on the balcony and connected to it using Bluetooth from inside (up to about 8m away).

Second thing to note: WIND WAP's proxy mangles HTML. That means often pages would come up with XML parsing errors in Firefox. IE was about as bad and Opera was slightly better, but the problem seems to be that the proxy occasionally removes spaces from within HTML tags, causing the browser to complain.

The connection was a bit more flaky than I'm used to with GPRS: even with the phone claiming 100% of signal (in many cases with direct line-of-sight to the base station on the mountain 1.6km above me) I'd have to try several times to connect, or the connection would drop. It might have been slightly more stable in Athens than Kefalonia, but it was pretty similar. From watching the activity lights in Windows it appeared the connection would fail to receive anything and have to retry several times until it arrived.

Third thing to note: my phone does 2.5G, that is it has EDGE but not 3G. The Bluetooth connection claims 460Kbps but that's just to the phone - I got a maximum of about 4Kbytes/s download speed. I didn't find anywhere that did EDGE.

I installed Opera Mini on my phone... quite impressed, given my phone is one of the very early Java phones that can't cope with programs more than 64KB. It didn't seem to run into the proxy mangling problem. It did keep crashing if you view too many pages, but I think that was it running out of memory (other Java apps easily run out of memory too on my phone).

Anyway, I asked about SSH. What I discovered is that the proxy is an HTTP proxy that only accepts CONNECT requests to port 443. You can make it talk SSH, but you'll need an SSH server that runs on port 443 rather than the usual 22. I used PuTTY successfully to connect, here are the settings:

Session:
Hostname mysshserver.example.com
Port 443
Protocol SSH

Connection:
Seconds between keepalives 15

Connection->Proxy:
Proxy type HTTP
Proxy hostname 192.168.200.10
Port 9401
Do DNS lookup at proxy end Yes

The above directs SSH connections through the proxy. The keepalives option is because the proxy has a fairly low timeout - it'll close connections that are idle for more than a few tens of seconds, so the keepalives ensures the SSH session doesn't disappear if you stop typing.

With all this I managed to connect successfully to my SSH server on port 443. Latency was a little slower than I'm used to on GPRS... in other words a bit to slow to type interactively - probably a latency of 1-3s. Given the frequent connection dropouts I experienced, if you SSH into Unix I strongly recommend installing GNU Screen which will preserve what you're doing if the connection drops and you need to reconnect.

Given the mangling HTTP proxy, I also used the SSH session to tunnel HTTP traffic to a web proxy I knew worked:

Connection->SSH->Tunnels:
Source port 1234
Destination port webcache.example.com:8080
Local ticked
then click Add

I set up Firefox to use a proxy of 'localhost' port 1234, which is then forwarded by PuTTY to connect to the webcache on port 8080. This made many websites work, and also gets around the 1MB download limit. Given the limited bandwidth I also ticked:

Connection->SSH:
Enabled compression

Not sure how much difference it made, but I think it helped a bit for HTML. One warning: if the PuTTY session drops and you start a new one, make sure you change the 1234 to something new (perhaps 1235, 1236 and so on) in the tunnel Source port setting (you'll have to delete the old tunnel and add a new one) and in your browser's proxy settings. This is because the old PuTTY will keep listening on port 1234 even for a short while after you kill it, and so the new PuTTY won't be able to listen there. That means web browser connections will appear to work but will never actually receive anything, unless you change to new port numbers. I'd be interested to know if there's a better workaround.

Total traffic: about 70MB
Cost with Virgin GPRS (UK or roaming): £350
Cost with WIND WAP: EUR3.49

I'm going to see if I can find a 3G phone to take with me next time - hopefully that might help the latency problems.

Does your phone already do data and is it unlocked? If it can do Bluetooth (and if you laptop can also) I'd recommend using it, because you can move it around to get the best signal (see my post above). I have no experience of datacards (maybe they have better antennas) but it would be more annoying to find the best signal was with the laptop on the baking hot balcony, for example.

Getting a new SIM isn't expensive (about 20EUR I think). In fact you could probably also pick up a secondhand phone with data for not very much. Possibly a bit trickier in the US, but my Nokia 6820 was £30 from Ebay UK about 6 months ago.

Hi,
A new Wind F2G (PAYG) SIM card costs 5€ and gives you 5€ of airtime (1€ every month for the five first months provided that you top-up at least once per month).

The XML parsing error (at least in Opera) is prevalent but you just have to click on the "reparse page as HTML" tag and it will work, but it is annoying...

The Wind proxy makes the connection quite slower and latencies longer...
Opera mini is great and doesn't have problems because it first passes and filters the pages you request through Opera's own servers so the pages that arrive on your phone are preformated by Opera and images shrinked in order for them to download fast and easy on your mobile. Some time Opera Mini freaks out but I think that's a problem of the Opera servers, as at the same time the GPRS connection through the laptop works fine...

Bluetooth is the best solution to get good signal.

Finally, Wind has EDGE support installed on all base stations since 2004 but they have never given it to the public for their own unknown reasons, some say they don't have adequate backbone in rural Greece for that... Probably they didn't bother since they offered 3G in cities where they have interest by business users but it would be great for them to offer EDGE everywhere on their GSM footprint!

Cosmote recently announced they covered 80% of their network with 3GSM and they're planning to have a complete network overlay with 3GSM by the end of the year, which means that Cosmote will cover the entire country with 3GSM! Wind and Vodafone GR are not even close to that, covering only cities!!!

Accessing internet from boat in Greece
 

Hi

This has been a really useful thread as I'm about to become a liveaboard in Greece and will be living on a boat, firstly in Lefkas (Nidri) then cruising around Greece for a couple of years. I want to be able to access the internet via a laptop, either from the quayside or from my boat which will be moored in harbours or at anchor near to shore.

I know absolutely nothing about using wifi or a mobile to access the internet and I've tried to follow this thread as it all seems to be what I'm looking for. Will the suggestions that you've been making about plugging into a laptop via a mobile and using a WIND pre-pay SIM card work for me?

Any hints/tips massively appreciated.

Can I also ask (though I know this is slightly off topic), would I need a top notch laptop to get decent speeds? I've been told that I need a Centrino processor, preferably at least 2 Ghz in order to get the best from wifi but they are very expensive. Do I really need this?

Many thanks for any help.

Kate

A WIND SIM will probably work OK... if you have a Bluetooth phone you might want to put it up high (on the mast?) to get better signal. I haven't any experience of using data at sea, but voice calls seem to have enough signal on ferry boats most of the way Patras-Kefallonia so it might be feasible. You may have better signal if you moor in a town. If you're in a remote bay it might be best to moor further away from the shore since the transmitters are often on tops of the mountains and you ideally want line-of-sight to the tall mountains. If you're doing this a lot you could buy a second cheap Bluetooth phone and mount it (with a charger cable) on top of the mast all the time.

The speed is pretty much unrelated to your computer. For GPRS in theory a computer made after about 1995 is going to be fast enough. For 3G maybe 1998-9 or so. If you buy a computer today even the cheapest bottom-of-the-line computers should have no trouble.

Centrino is a brand which basically means wifi+low power processor. Low power's handy if you're often going to be using your computer without a mains connection, as you get more battery life. But wifi is wifi: for the net it'll work just the same on a fast computer than a slow one. Especially in Greece where there aren't too many public wifi hotspots, even if you have a wifi connection it'll most likely be running at a tiny fraction of the 54Mbit/s claimed and so your computer speed isn't an issue.

It depends whether you think you'll be working a lot away from a power point, or whether you might be (say) running from the boat batteries/engine all the time. If the latter, any laptop with wireless will do (and even those that don't, it'll cost about £20 to add). If the former, look for a laptop the advertises the most hours on battery (often they quote another figure with an expensive auxiliary battery - ignore that. Don't believe that you'll actually get these figures, but they're a useful comparison). These tend to be more expensive, but if you don't need a fast laptop you could look for an older model reconditioned/secondhand. Fit a new battery if you buy this way, though, as batteries wear out through use.

If you are running from boat power rather than mains power, it might still be worth looking for a low power laptop as I don't know how big your boat will be - you don't want to drain the batteries for navigation lights!

Hello!

All companies have very good coverage in the sea with both GSM and GPRS! Almost all the teritorial waters are covered! Friends who go sailing in the Aegean call me with no problems...

As for data, since you're staying long and mobile will me your main means for accessing the internet, provided that the WIND Plus non-stop solution works only for basic web browsing and chat, you might want to consider the greek providers' data card solutions with various offers. WIND ofers Data Card Non-Stop with a 20GB/month fair usage policy.

Cosmote currently offers unlimited data until September and I do think that after this offer they will re-adjust their tariffs to at least match the WIND ones, same for Vodafone, they offer unlimited data on their Vodafone Data Card programs until September and are expected to re-adjust prices after that, or even extend the offer!

Cosmote claims to have currently covered 80% of the population with 3G and does have the most extensive 3G network in Greece with optimistic unofficial statements by company insiders that they will try to have a complete (!) 3G network overlay by the end of the year!

Cosmote has by far the best 3G coverage in rural Greece (outside the main cities of Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras, Larissa etc.) so it might suit you better for mobile internet, if your needs exceed typical low-speed browsing that you can easily do with WIND's GPRS and their inexpensive Plus non-stop offer (3,49€/month compared to more than 20-50€ month for data-card plans).

Cosmote's extensive 3G network though is said to be lacking the necessary backbone, thus the 3G network is "virtual" in some places, meaning that although you have 3G speeds from your mobile to the base station, the speed is limited on the station's connection to the company's network, thus you get slow 2G-like speeds...
WIND on the other side has overlaid its network with EDGE since 2004 but has never offered it to its customers for unknown reasons, it is not known if they're ever going to offer it after all...

Look at the providers' sites for their data-card offers to see if there is one to suit your needs. All sites are available both in English and Greek, so you won't have problems finding your way around. It's www.cosmote.gr, www.vodafone.gr and www.wind.com.gr (not www.wind.gr since some clever guy has taken the domain name before WIND rebranded)!

Notice though that in the last months, mobile data prices are going down due to renewed competition between the companies so prices are expected to fall in the coming months...


For example, the cheapest DC offer right now is offered to university students only and it offers unlimited (20GB/month fair usage) access from 20:00-08:00 everyday and a mere 70MB/month from 08:00-20:00.
This is a quite new offer introduced only two weeks ago, so it is expected that the student offer will be matched by the other companies too and that similar inexpensive unlimited programs (maybe with time restrictions like the afternoon program mentioned above) are expected also for the non-academic community!

Thank you!
 

Cheers Caliston and gmmour - you have saved me plenty of money I reckon!

Thanks for your straightforward explanations. Really useful.

Cheers! Katie

Wind mobile TV is no longer free, if you open the links I provided above, you will be charged the wind mobile TV fees for the channel or the program you are viewing!
Wind plus non-stop, however, continues to provide unlimited internet browsing with ?3,49 a month, as described above!
A new info I got is how to view you tube and streaming videos in general, surpassing the gwap proxy server's 1MB limitation:
You have to use the Netscape browser and select continuous streaming, through the settings panel. This will force the program to download the streaming you tube videos continuously in small parts as the video plays. These parts are smaller than 1MB even for big videos and so you'll be able to watch the entire streaming video through wind plus non-stop without problems with the 1MB limitation!

New WIND GR Wireless Broadband and prepay broadband offers
 

Here's an update on the new WIND GR tarrifs for its mobile broadband (HSPA 3,6 Mbps) offer. The product is calles WIND ADSM (a marketing name to show that the prices are comparable to fixed ADSL)...

The new prices for postpaid subscriptions are:

Wind offer monthly charge
ΑDSM Basic (1 MB) 3,5 €
ADSM 300 MB 17 €
ADSM 5 GB 32 €
ADSM Non-Stop (30 GB) 49 €
Student pack* (33 GB) 30 € 3 GΒ from 08:00 to 20:00, 30 GB from 20:00 to 08:00

*The WIND student pack is offered to greek university students, it offers interconnection with the Hellenic Academic Network and provides an IP address from inside the student's university LAN for free access to international online libraries that have agreements with the student's university and can only be accessed from a valid university IP. Since it is funded from the Ministry of Education applications must be first filled online through the greek student internet portal www.diodos.edu.gr and then be printed and brought to a WIND store for product purchase. A one-year contract and free HSPA modem (USB, PCMCIA or PCI-Express) must be purchased with the student plan.

A user can either subscribe to these programs with an unlimited time contract (can be cancelled at any time after the first month), or sign a one-year contract and get an HSPA modem for free (either a 3.6Mbps Huawei E220 USB modem, a 1.8Mbps PCMCIA card or a 3.6Mbps PCI-Express card). A wireless WiFi HSPA router (1.8Mbps) is available with a subsidized price for one-year contracts.
http://www.wind.com.gr/pages.fds?langID=2&pageID=1442

There are also two prepaid packs available to WIND F2G prepaid subscribers:
ADSM Non-stop 2 which offers 2 days unlimited access for 10 Euro
and ADSM Non-stop 7 which offers 7 days unlimited access for 30 Euro
(There is a cap of 1GB per day for ADSM Non-stop 2 and 7)
These prepaid offers can be activated on any F2G prepaid SIM by sending an SMS with the words "NS 2" or "NS 7" to 3553 and having 10 or 30 Euro respectively on your account balance.
http://www.wind.com.gr/pages.fds?pageID=1443&langID=2


PS: The Wind plus non-stop offer described in this forum with unlimited HSPA access and a 1MB per downloaded file limitation is still available for 3,49 Euro per month and remains the best offer in the greek market!

Here are the offers of vodafone.gr and cosmote.gr respecitvely. (Cosmote covers almost all of Greece with 3GSM and most cities with HSPA, Vodafone covers most of the cities with HSPA while Wind also covers most of the greek cities and has HSPA coverage enabled all over its 3G network). Only wind offers an updated map with its 3G coverage on www.wind.com.gr
All three offer HSPA @ 3.6 Mbps. Cosmote has announced that they will be upgrading to 7.2Mbps HSDPA and HSUPA for incresed upload speeds beginning from big cities soon. Vodafone and Wind are expected to follow. The Huawei E220 USB HSPA modems offered by all three are said to be able to be upgraded to support download speeds up to 7.2Mbps and increased upload speeds with HSUPA with a simple firmware update so if you go for a free modem, get the USB one which is future-proof.

Vodafone offer monthly charge
VMC 1 MB 6 €
VMC 25 MB 19 €
VMC 80 MB 29 €
VMC 5 GB 39€ student*: 29 Euro
VMC 20 GB 99 €

*The Vodafone Student VMC is the same product as VMC 5GB. It does not offer an academic IP address and can be directly purchased at any vodafone shop with a valid student ID card (no need for application through the www.diodos.edu.gr student internet portal)

Cosmote offer monthly charge /monthly charge for Cosmote postpaid subscribers*
CDP Basic (1 MB) 3,5 €
CDP 200 MB 15 € /13€
CDP 5 GB 34,5 € /29,5 €
CDP 20 GB 60 € /50€

*To benefit of the reduced price the user must also have an active postpaid voice subscription with cosmote.
These reduced price data products for existing Cosmote voice customers are offered either on a stand-alone SIM (with optional free modem with one-year contract) or on the existing subscriber's SIM (for his voice postpaid subscription) without subsidized HSPA modem (ideal for those who want to tether their laptop to their HSPA phone). In any case, customers will receive their data plan charge on their existing cosmote bill.

All companies offer either an unlimited time contract or a one-year contract with free HSPA modem, all three of them offer a selection between USB, PCMCIA or PCI-Express modems.

The Vodafone and Wind products are offered only on a separate SIM and cannot be combined on the existing voice postpaid SIM.

For visitors in Greece the Wind prepaid packs for 2 or 7 days and the unlimited time contracts from all three providers for visits of one month or more are coming to complement the existing unbeatable offer of wind plus non-stop described on this thread! Non-EU citizens might have problems to sign an (unlimited or one-year) contract though and wind plus non-stop and the two prepaid WIND ADSM packs might be the only available solution for them.

Have fun in Greece and don't forget to bring your laptops and HSPA phones or modems! The competition has brought prices amazingly down in the past few months! Vodafone is expected to lower its prices after the Wind ADSM products have brough 30GB down to 50 Euro and 5GB down to 32 Euro!

WIND Plus connection options
 

While I stay in the family cottage in Zemeno, I have no internet access so WIND Plus appears to be my best option. Zemeno is closer to Distomo than Arachova, so it appears that HSDPA is not available based on the map. GPRS is still much better than nothing which is what I have now.

I do own an unlocked Sierra 875 data card that supports European frequencies. Assuming I set up the proxy as if I was tethering to phone, will it work with Plus? (If not I need to consider a new phone.)

I also own a Sony Erikson t68 that was software upgraded to a t68i. But the 'upgrade' has given me problems and I can't be sure it will really work as a modem even if I do buy the proper cable. My laptop has no bluetooth so I need a cable.

Is there a website that explains tethering for someone who has no experience?

I suppose the ideal phone would be inexpensive, support GPRS, easy to find data cables and modem software for Windows XP. It should also have Java and the ability to use a browser. Is there any other criteria I should consider?

WIND Plus Non-Stop service works for me!
 

I just got back from holidays in Greece and enjoyed great new ways to access the Internet. My sister-in-law now has Net One which gave me wireless access in her Athens apartment. I followed the direction in this thread and with some improvising I had great success using Wind to access the web. GPRS speed is a little painful, but much better than no connection at all.

The local kiosk where I buy newspapers was out of Wind SIMs so I went to the nearby Wind store to buy a SIM and recharge card. It turned out to be one of the most complicated €8 transaction I can remember. If I had known, I would've tried other kiosks. Also, the recharge card can not be used until the SIM is activated by making at least 1 billable call. Calling customer support for €.12 is a cheap way to get activated.

I do not understand why I could not get Firefox or Thunderbird to work through a proxy when Internet Explorer V6 worked fine. Moving from page to page sometimes led to IE hanging. I had to close it frequently. Quite few websites could not be loaded at all. For example, www.prepaidgsm.net was OK, but www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/ led to attempts to “download the file” because the page was not recognized as a web page. I downloaded Opera and discovered that all my problem pages could be viewed by letting Opera fix it by reparsing as HTML.

I used my Sierra 875 card for access. Mine is a Cingular branded card commonly available unlocked on eBay for about $100. The WIND Connection Manager software could never find my card, so I used the Sierra 3G Watcher software. It was easy to create a profile for WIND N0N-Stop since all I had to specify was username, password, and access point name. The same Sierra software allows me to send and receive SMS messages at the same time I'm connected to the Internet.

Finally we have a way to browse the web and read email even while in mountains with no phone line available. Thanks to all for documenting this process.

Wind plus non-stop on Nokia N810 tablet?
 

Is anyone using, or know somebody who is using, Wind plus non-stop with a Nokia N810 (or N800) internet tablet?

This is a Linux (Maemo) based tablet (not a phone) with a Mozilla Gecko browser called MicroB. There might be two problems using this:
- there doesn't appear to be any way of manually setting an http proxy
- the html-mangling, mentioned in this thread, and MicroB

For the proxy, it may not be a problem. The N810 connects via bluetooth to my N70 phone. I'm not sure whether this is 'tethering' or not - the 2 Nokias may just set the proxy automatically - the N810 supports PAC.

So before I start interrogating the Nokia tablet forums, or hacking into the Linux configs, I thought I'd just ask if anyone is already using and N800 or an N810 and whether it works with Wind non-stop.

I don't know anybody who has the Internet Tablet, but since you're "tethering" through a phone, I don't think it will be a problem... The phone handles the proxy but still (as my experience with tethering to a PC shows) you might have to do some settings on the browser too and that might me the tricky part...

I suggest you ask Nokia people about that, you won't really find a lot of Greek users with the N810 and using wind plus... Most of them are using it with a mobile and with a laptop...

Thanks. I've since found the proxy settings, so that's one of the two potential problems solved. As for the http-mangling, I'll have to wait and see.

The Nokia N810 is a very nice gadget, but I've yet to use it with the phone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N810

I have the older version (Nokia 770) and on mine it is possible to set the proxy in the browser so I should think it will be the same with yours too. The proxy cannot be setup in any browser options. Instead in my case I found it in the 'Advanced settings' of the 'Connection Settings' of a chosen connection in the 'Connection manager'. There is an option there to enter the HTTP proxy and port number etc. Took me ages to find it but all works well now.

I am no expert, so for further help it will probably be best if you ask the serious Maemo geeks on www.internettablettalk.com

Oops... crossed message. I see you found the proxy settings! Have you never managed to connect it through a phone to the internet? I usually find a wifi signal but when not I regularly browse and check emails etc. on the N770 through the GPRS on my phone. Works well!

I haven't tried because I'm at home in the UK and I don't want to spend £5/Mb on Virgin experimenting. I'll be in Italy in April using Wind a Mega deal, so I set the phone up for that (very easy: select Italy, Select Wind, done!) which is when I found the proxy settings.

From there Corfu and the Ionian. It looks as if it'll be mainly GPRS - not much 3G I think.

The http-mangling, unfortunately is a browser problem, so it depends on the Tablet's browser and the way it handles errors... What happens actually in Opera is that you get an XML error message prompting you to click on a link for the browser to parse it as HTML. I don't know why, but some pages (especially PHP and forums) are falsely parsed as XML by Opera when tethered to a phone with the Wind Plus access point, maybe it has to do with the transparent proxy they use on this access point... Good luck! (It was impossible for a browser not to have proxy settings, but it seems did a great job with the Tablet's GUI hiding all the Settings under incomprehensible menus... That's what phone manufacturers do all the time)

HTML mangling
 

I've been doing some research on this, to try to predict what might be happening. Can you post the URLs of some sites that cause this problem? My theory at the moment is that they are served with content type "application/xhtml+xml" instead of "text/html". This is what seems to cause browsers to parse the site as XML.

There is no 'parse as html' facility in Gecko browsers. There's a Firefox Addon called 'Force Content-Type' which changes the content type - unfortunately the wrong way: html to xml! But it could be changed.

Wind data tariff
 

I've been studying the Wind GR website. I think I'll get Wind 1 postpaid provided I can add Plus non-stop to that; calls to Europe are 2½ times cheaper than F2G. There's a €25 one-time fee but I intend to spend several summers in Greece so it'll probably be worthwhile. Is the bill just charged to the credit card?

In case the http-mangling mentioned above is too bad I tried to find out the default cost of GPRS/internet. I can't find it. I did find this page:
http://www.wind.com.gr/pages.fds?langID=2&pageid=1213
which (apart from containing an error - I assume you get 40Mb on the WIND GPRS 40 plan) is odd. If you take WIND GPRS 10 you get 10Mb for €17.85 - which is €1.79 per Mb. But extra Mb cost €0.0014/Κb - which is €1.40 per Mb - which is cheaper.

Is this right? Or should it be 10Gb and 40Gb - or something else?

I'm now in Greece (Corfu) using Wind Plus non-stop on a tethered laptop. Some experience:

I was told in the Wind Shop where I bought the F2G SIM (€5, inc €1 credit) that I could activate Plus non-stop it by calling 1265 and following voice-prompts. Also that I could change the language into English. The former may be true but the latter didn't work: it said (in Greek) key zero for English - that got a short Greek response (don't know what) but no English.

I activated it by sending an SMS saying PLUS to 19369 (not 369 as an earlier post, though both might work.)

I have discovered that a blank SMS to 1269 gives me a balance.
The SIM packet says that I can recharge by sending a 16digit scratch card number to 1268.

On the subject of language, one US site says that it can be changed by dialling 1276 then 3 then 2 but I can't find that on the Wind site and I haven't tried it. (I can't find a list of such numbers at all on the site - in either Greek or English.)

The HTML mangling is bad using Firefox but I think I've partially fixed it by using this addon:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3207

Set up a rule as follows:
. (single dot for the regular expression - matches everything) old="application/xhtml+xml" new ="text/html"

This allows me to see a lot of sites I couldn't - including this forum and my own Wordpress blog! Whether they will all work I don't know.

I don't suppose that addon will work on the Nokia N810 which has the same mangling problem.

Plus non-stop doesn't work with other protocols (POP, NNTP) so I can't get usenet or use proper email - only webmail - which is a nuisance.

Edited:

1 Please feed back to me any experience of my Firefox fix. I'd like to interest the developer in providing a Firefox 3 version.

2 I intend to get a COSMOTE SIM as a backup in case I can't get a Wind signal in remote islands. Any equivalent cheap data package for that?

What a coincidence! This week I've been working on the HTTP mangling too! I've come up with the following Perl script which acts as an HTTP proxy - should work in any browser on any OS. You'll need Perl installed, as well as the LWP::UserAgent module:
http://search.cpan.org/~gaas/libwww-...P/UserAgent.pm
(was already installed on my Ubuntu machine) and the HTTP::Proxy module:
http://search.cpan.org/~book/HTTP-Pr.../HTTP/Proxy.pm

Here's the script, which is very simple. It only works for HTTP, so don't try using it for HTTPS, FTP or other protocols - set your browser to go to WIND's proxy direct. I haven't done it, but it might be feasible to do a two-pass process to avoid the 1MB restriction by trying the WIND proxy, and if that fails redirect to another proxy (eg one using an SSH tunnel as I detailed above).

Paste it into a file called something.pl and run it. The proxy will then run on localhost port 3128 for as long as the perl script is running.

It's been suggested I use privoxy on this thread:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...404#post180404

Have I got perl on the N810? I doubt it - it hasn't even got a decent text editor. But I expect it's available. Thanks for the suggestion.

Some stuff to work on here while I'm anchored in a bay with my feet up, a Mythos beer or two to hand....