My Abroadband SIM is rocking

I looked into this, but at 59c a MB it’s still very expensive! Vodafone’s europe rate is much cheaper now (opt in and get 25MB for £2 a day). Truphone are under half the price in the US as well.

I bought my Abroadband thinking I would get a better deal using this method rather than paying hotel WiFi prices. I was very wrong…. I used it 4 times while in Switzerland just to check my e.mails. I didn’t send any e.mails or open any attachments. I couldn’t beleive my eyes when I got the bill. I had been on the internet for a total of 20 mins and my bill was 41.23 Euro. It would have been much cheaper to have gone through the hotel. Needless to say I will not be using it until the the price goes from 59cents to around 20cents per MG.So those of you out there surfing right now BEWARE!!!!

Hi Linda, you make a very good point — I use Abroadband for quick stints of
connectivity. It seems like you downloaded at least 70mb in that 20 minutes
and … yeah, it’s 59c a meg, so no wonder it became quite expensive. 😐

can someone give me the APN settings….. they are gone since the update… thanks

They’re on the sim documentation!

I bought one, but I can’t use it because the registration process fails to complete. I emailed abroadband.com about this and have not had a reply in over a week. I phoned them in Austria 3 days ago, spoke to a pleasant help line man who told me to clear my internet cache. I did this but it didn’t fix the problem. He said he had no further suggestions and would pass my problem on to someone else. That was 3 days ago and I have heard nothing more from them since. Disappointing to say the least.

like other speaker said the registration is not very good an the data price of 59 Cent per MB is too expansive.

I prefer an isolated application for spain or italy. Prepaid-Global (http://www.prepaid-global.de/) offers data sims with rate from 3 cent per mb in italy (Italy Prepaid Data SIM) – the specialist for mobile internet in europe

no one is cheaper than they are…

Did you do the registration via their connection?

I need the utility of being able to roam across multiple countries myself

Ewan, perhaps you can give me an idea of what I could expect to pay for just looking at my gmail account say 3 times a day and only reading probably no more than 2 or 3 important emails. I haven’t used a device like this before and have been surprised by the high costs figuring in the messages here.

For *just* that purpose, I reckon you’d use about a megabyte per day. Provided you didn’t allow your phone to do anything else. So that’d be roughly 59 euro cents a day.

Did you buy the sim online? During registration it remembered my details from when I purchased it.

Just ordered one for that reason too. Cheaper options available, but this is the cheapest I know of that gives me something reasonably affordable (well better than my home operator) for short-notice trips.

I hope you find it as useful as I have, Frank!

Yes Joe, it still works perfectly fine on 3. I had to add a separate
‘network profile’ through the control panel for Abroadband. That was very
easy — all the APN settings are sent with the sim.

The only thing I need to do is activate the Abroadband profile on the MiFi
unit when I want to use the Abroadband sim. When I put the 3 sim back in, I
then swap the profile to the 3 one.

I’m sure there is an explanation!

I forgot to say — it’s not quite PAYG — instead you give them your payment
details (in my case, PayPal) and then they bill you based on usage across
the month.

That’s not good however I think one of the big issues with Abroadband is that customers aren’t necessarily evaluating the product in the correct manner.

I agree with Frank that the customer service of abroadband is absolutely shocking. 

I have purchased the sim + modem combination and cannot use it on HSDPA/USMT. I have emailed customer services with no reply and the helpline said I need to wait for a response to the email as they cannot help me. When settings are changed to GPRS/EDGE  only it works on my Mac and on a friends PC it all worked fine which leaves me to believe they need to update their Mac software.

Combined with no customer service so far I the amount of time I have spent reinstalling the program several times this has truly been the best “plug and play” device yet.

I’m sorry to hear you’re having a bad time with it — it’s working perfectly
for me with my MiFi unit!

lucky you – at least all of you have your cards !! I tried to get a card with them and so far it hasn’t arrived … it took three payment attempts, lots of calls and now on friday I’m leaving on vacation and that was the whole point of getting the card in the first place !! I’m sorry I didn’t find this review before buying, but I will be pointing other people to it so that they don’t make the same mistake !! 

It’s a shame you can’t easily buy them at an airport for example

Can just put the abroadband sim card into my THREE ZTE MF627 dongle or do I need to do something technical and clever?

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Install this NetWorx – Free Bandwidth Monitoring or something similar, so you can monitor net usage. Disable anti-virus, windows and all kind of software updates. Quit skype, even on idle it eats bandwidth, use pidgin instead as a IM client. Set up mail reader client, web pages can generate a lot of traffic (flash animations, pictures). 

Dont’ buy it. (1) It is very expensive to use (15 minutes browsing news on internet = €5 bill in my case!). (2) Abroadband is not able to register business users (problem with VAT number validation) however when I offered to re-register as a private person they were unable to do so as their system does not allow it (computer says no).  Instead you are supposed to return it and wait for another gadget to be sent to you. Given I bought this when on holiday and already travelling it was not a viable option. After a lenghty correspondence Abroadband offered to refund the money – that was in July 2011 and now it is September and I am still waiting for this refund.  I sent several reminders to Mr. Goran Zupanic of Abroadband (who promised the refund) but after a while he just stopped answering my emails. So now I have a useless gadget and no refund. I am going to complain to Rundfunk- und Telekomregulierungs-GmbH – let’s hope this will help. 

I’m sorry to hear that!

As I said in my response to your other post on Wireless Worker… Abroadband don’t bill by time.  If they charged you €5 it’s because you used 8 meg. Their per megabyte pricing is some of the lowest available for pre-pay.
That doesn’t excuse the customer service issues you’ve had, but your pricing comment is wrong.

As I said in my response to your other post on Wireless Worker… Abroadband don’t bill by time.  If they charged you €5 it’s because you used 8 meg. Their per megabyte pricing is some of the lowest available for pre-pay.
That doesn’t excuse the customer service issues you’ve had, but your pricing comment is wrong.

How do you know you didn’t use 100mb whilst your device downloaded updates in the background? (for example)

It’s my experience — I’m rather amazed at all the trouble folk appear to be having

Ewan,

I have a question – I have a 3 Mifi (looks like the one in your picture above)

If I get a abroadband sim can I just plug it in and expect it to work? Or do I need to unlock the mifi? 

If unlocking is required, are there any *reputable* places that will do this? Carphone Warehouse etc? 

Many thanks,

Henry

It will need to be unlocked, but Three will do this for you if it’s pre-pay or out of contract. You’ll then need to configure the Abroadband APN into it (but that’s simple to do).

Avoid this company.

Tried to get a confirmation for an order, but haven’t heard anything. Customer service, as mentioned below, is pitiful.

How about this company giving advice, on their site and with every order, on avoiding unexpected bills due to updates?

Blimey. Based on the site authors review I was a single step from buying this…having just read the first 6 or 7 comments, almost universally saying BEWARE, Im going elsewhere.
To the author (Ewan?), if you can no longer stand by your glowing review perhaps a quick note at the top of the article so readers can make up their own mind?
Shame, it sounded like Id found my roaming solution. Im looking for a solution that allows me to get connect in Spain, where I am working for a month and need to check emails daily. Suggestions welcomed.

I’m totally fine with my abroad and sim. It’s the people who are expecting to be able to download a gigabyte each day in France that are getting it wrong. Abroadband is a tactical solution that works fantastically for me when I’m abroad an wanting to avoid paying lots for my data.
To be clear I am ONLY using Abroadband to send or receive perhaps 2-3mb a day.

I have had abroadband for over a year now, and travel quite a bit to different countries. It has worked very well for me on my galaxy tab (android) but I have never been able to get it working on my nokia n-97. Sometimes it takes a while to get the connection for the first time in a country, but generally I’m very happy and it has saved me lots on roaming charges !