Oh Internet, where art thou

I'll tell you where it isn't ... Internet from Starlink is not available for our cruise ship in the waters of southeast China. And, it hasn't been reliable anywhere in Vietnam. 

This lack of internet is annoying to some of us and devastating to others. There are people on the ship with real jobs. They are expected to show up, online, for 4-8 hours. These people fear for their jobs. 

Jim and I still have a business online. We normally spend 15-30 hours a week creating videos, writing articles, hosting zoom calls etc. We are not expected by anyone at any particular time. We won't be missed during a few days offline. Our only real worry is that someone has sent us an email and is wondering why we haven't responded.

We have a backup

Actually, we have 4 backups! Our primary source of internet is the ships WiFi, powered by Starlink. When we're off the ship, our phones have their own cellular connection. Even on the ship, when it is in port, we can use our cellular options: We have 3 phones and one separate hotspot.    

1. My Samsung phone with an Asia eSim from Saily
2. My iPhone with an account on US Mobile with international options
3. Jim's pixel phone with an eSim from Airalo
4. Any of these phones can share their data using the hotspot feature, but we also have a dedicated hotspot device by Solis/Simo.

The separate hotspot device is so handy. We can set it in the window where it will have the best connection to cell towers on land. And then we can connect all our devices to it - just like any other WiFi hotspot. It can handle up to 15 connections. It has a built in eSim and a global data plan. 

We paid $320 for the device including lifetime 1GB/mo international data. This means it works everywhere in the world we go, without doing anything. 1GB doesn't go far, but it's just good to know it's there. When we need to use it more, like here in Vietnam, we pay for 200GB/mo at $90.

On our computers, the Simo hotspot shows up just like all the other WiFi networks.