Retirement with No Problem

Connecting to the internet with Orange PAYG

I have been asked by many about connecting to the internet from a narrowboat.. so I thought I would do a blog about the latest bargain from Orange.

This will only work if you have a mobile phone or datacard (a normal sim card will go in those datacards) that will allow an orange sim card. Lots of mobiles are ‘locked’ into their networks, so if you have an O2 sim card, it is highly unlikely that an orange sim will work in it. Of course, it is well worth trying!

You could get your phone unlocked though, so you can use any sim card in it.. lots of markets have stalls that sell mobile phones and accessories, these guys will normally be able to unlock your phone for a fiver or so.. or look on the internet, there are plenty of places that offer an unlocking service..

Next you will need a data lead to go from your phone to the computer on your narrowboat. Or if your phone is bluetooth enabled then it is far better to get a bluetooth doggle thingy, which means that if the connection is not that good, you can move your phone anywhere on the boat within 10 mts of the computer without any wires.  I use Belkin, it comes with everything you need for a wire free connection, its brilliant..

Your phone instructions will tell you how to connect to the internet through a PC, but if you have any problems please feel free to email me.

So then all you need is a PAYG orange sim card, and they can be got from here.  Look at the extras you get with it too!

Register the card and stick a tenner on it.. that way you will also get “free evening calls for five years”.. heh of course nothing is for free for real!.. so by ‘free’ they mean up to 600 minutes a month.. don’t go over that or they will charge you the normal rate. (Do check the terms and conditions)

So with your new PAYG orange sim card registered, all you need to do is to phone 450 and choose their Orange World ‘Extra’.. You need to press 3,1,4,1 as the nice lady gives you options, then finally pressing 1 at the end.  It will automatically deduct a pound from your £10.  (the pound digit isn’t coming out right through my software, sorry).  You will be told that it has been activated and will expire at 23.59pm on that day.

Just phone the next day and do the same again if you want to go online..

Now you can browse and download all you like from the internet.. there is NO LIMIT to the amount of bandwidth you can use.. The other day I tried hard to see if there was a limit.. I down and uploaded over 70MB.. bearing in mind that I pay 30 pounds or so on a monthly contract for a limit of 400MB… and I think Orange charge normally for gprs about one pound for 1MB of data on normal gprs rates, so you can see this is an absolutely fantastic bargain on PAYG.

If you want a program to be able to monitor your data usage, the best is DuMeter, it isn’t free, but its the best.

Hope this hasn’t bored too many people…