Best way of getting in car wifi

Associate
Joined
16 Nov 2007
Posts
811
Hi all

Looking for suggestions on the best way of getting a 3G / 4G wifi access point in the car. Ideal criteria below

1 - Small dongle / something that could be hidden
2 - ideally a SIM with data that doesn't expire after one month.

This is needed for low bandwidth usage, my inbuilt sat nav connects via wifi for connected services such as live traffic updates etc.

I currently use mobile tethering but it's a pain switching it on each time plus battery drain etc.

Thanks

Mike
 
Mrk is your man. I think he even managed to blag 200mb per month free on some or other sim if I remember correctly.
 
^ 200mb will not be enough

You'll probably be best looking at those mifi devices.
 
^ 200mb will not be enough

You'll probably be best looking at those mifi devices.

He said it was for low bandwidth usage for traffic updates. I reckon 200mb would be enough. I saw the post where mrk explained how to get the sim, it was from Three, not sure what thread it was in.

Three offer a PAYG data sim preloaded with 12gb of data for £30. Data is valid for 12months

http://store.three.co.uk/mobile/vie...rTariff=50to99.99&payGPriceForTariff=0to49.99
12GB is a bit overkill no? :D
 
Last edited:
He said it was for low bandwidth usage for traffic updates. I reckon 200mb would be enough. I saw the post where mrk explained how to get the sim, it was from Three, not sure what thread it was in.


12GB is a bit overkill no? :D

Yeah, 1gb a month probably is overkill. But at £30 it's a decent option if you just want to fit and forgot about it for a year. If your using a potable sim wifi router then it could come in handy out of the car.
If 200mb a month is enough then it's Three who also offer the sim that gives your 200mb a month for free, it was mentioned in mrk's m3 thread
 
Last edited:
Yeah, 1gb a month probably is overkill. But at £30 it's a decent option if you just want to fit and forgot about it for a year. If your using a potable sim wifi router then it could come in handy out of the car.
If 200mb a month is enough then it's Three who also offer the sim that gives your 200mb a month for free

Actually that's not a bad suggestion. I totally didn't read properly, thought it was £30 per month for 12GB/month. :o
 
Wow, thanks for all the quick replies!

The £30 a year deal sounds good but the one that you mention that MRK talks about in an M3 thread sounds like it may be better?? Will try and search for it unless someone is kind enough to link it?

And yes, it is for very low bandwidth, 200MB a month would cover it. Wouldn't want to top up every month though if that makes sense. If it's a one off purchase that auto tops up 200MB a month that sounds great! Otherwise the £30 a year SIM sounds suitable.

Thank you
 
Follow the link I posted regarding the 12gb for £30 sim from Three, the other sim details are on the same page. The sim costs £10, comes preloaded with 1gb of data, and auto tops up with an additional 200mb of data a month
 
What phone do you have? If it's a rooted Android (most phones are very to root) and you have your phone auto connect to your in-car bluetooth you could use something like Tasker to detect the connection then turn on wifi tethering.

I doubt leaving tethering on all the time would use much battery assuming it's not being used outside the car.

.. or just buy a USB ciagarette charger for £0.99 :p
 
He said it was for low bandwidth usage for traffic updates. I reckon 200mb would be enough. I saw the post where mrk explained how to get the sim, it was from Three, not sure what thread it was in.


12GB is a bit overkill no? :D

I'm the one that introduced the idea to mrk. I use mine just for TomTom traffic and 200mb runs out in approximately 3 days.

But now I have about 5 SIM cards that I swap around so I can barely manage :D
 
200MB is more than enough for satnav/traffic etc. I use Waze and to give you an idea, since the 10th April on my phone it has used 53MB, that's with a constant data connection 24/7.

My 200MB on the car dongle has run dry though. I accidentally updated some large apps from the Play Store without using hotspot from my phone and that killed the 200MB in days, so now must wait until the 7th July for the next 200MB :o
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom