Getting access to the Internet when travelling can sometimes be easy ( when the hotels provide free wifi) and other times prove to be tricky and expensive, especially when using roaming access from your cell phone.

Ahead of the current trip to Valencia, Spain I did some research and found a few options for prepaid 3G access. All the cell providers had options, including Vodafone and Yoigo.

In practice life was not so easy, the language barrier and shop assistants who were not into playing charades left me without access after going into numerous shops.

Finally I came across some websites who suggested Carrefour. I headed across to the closest one (near the city of arts and sciences) found a slightly more helpful assistant and picked up a Carrefour Movil prepaid Internet sim for 5 euros. They accepted my South African drivers license as ID since my passport was at the hotel. The SIM has no credit preloaded, so I loaded on another 10 euro. This gives 100 meg of data a day for 1 euro a day, and uncapped 128k speeds after the 100 meg.

At first the SIM didn’t work, but after manually creating an APN with “carrefourinternet” as the APN and all worked great. Mobile hotspot on Android 2.2 meant access could be shared between the iPad Laptop and other mobile devices. 100 meg gets used up quickly but the uncapped 128k works well enough and we are getting through about 250meg a day. For 1 euro that’s a bargain and much better value than the 20 euro a day fee at the hotel (only HTTP browsing is free).

Whenever travelling, try get a local prepaid SIM, you will certainly save yourself a packet.