As all our work is entirely dependent on internet connection, it’s very important to have high-speed internet regardless of our location while keeping costs at minimum.
We’re always looking for good solutions when we travel with our van abroad for extended periods of time and in this post we would like to share our experience with internet connection from our travels through Spain and The Netherlands.
We both have a roaming package included in our monthly subscription that makes 140GB together. This would be more than enough for regular daily use but not for work. We both upload and download large files and consume together around 800GB per month.
In Spain, we used https://spaininternet.net. They work together with Vodafone ES and have very good customer service in English. We even contacted them via email over the weekend when we had technical issues with the sim card and we received support in no time. This service is specially made for foreigners travelling through Spain and the sim card can be ordered online and shipped to any Correos package location, hotel, camping, or any other Spanish address.
First five days cost 5 Euros per day, then each next day 1.5 Euros. So if you take it for one month you will pay 50 Euros. For this price, you get 10GB/ Day, although we used much more than that in one day and had to recharge more often. For example, if you pay for 30 days you get 300GB which you could use in 10 days. In addition to the SIM card it’s also possible to rent a portable WiFi router which will cost additional 7Euros per day for the first 5 days and 2 Euros per day afterwards.
If you choose just a sim card then you can dispose it after use. If you rent a router they will send it together with a return envelope that you can use to drop the router in any post box in Spain. Although if you need a router for a longer period of time we would recommend getting your own 4G or 5G wifi router. Here are our top 3 wifi routers starting from the cheapest.
HUAWEI E5577 – https://amzn.to/3Mq8ls9
4G/LTE router with up to 150 Mbit/s download speed and 50 Mbit/s upload speed. This is the same router model as the one you can rent from Spain Internet. We used it for two months and with our large data file transfer it was struggling at times but just for internet browsing and watching movies it’s more than enough.
Netgear Nighthawk MR2100 – https://amzn.to/39gUbfl
The best 4G router on the market. We have it in our tiny house and we can both work, download and upload files at the same time with high speed without issues. It has up to 2 GBit/s Download Speed and up to 20 devices can be connected at the same time.
Netgear Nighthawk MR5200 – https://amzn.to/3msarwV
The latest made model by Netgear. It works with 5G antennas which means you will get the best available speed. It can download up to 4 GBit/s and up to 32 devices can be connected at the same time. This one is definitely on our bucket list 🙂
Internet in the Netherlands.
Similar to Spain, we found services for travelers in The Netherlands. At https://internetondemand.nl you can order a sim card anywhere in the Netherlands but you have to organize the address by yourself. So it can be a hotel, a campground, or as in our case, a friend’s house. 🙂
The price is slightly higher than in Spain but at least you get unlimited data. The minimum order is 2 days and it will cost 27 Euros. We took it for one month and paid 100 Euros.
With a mobile router, two days will cost 30 Euros, and one month 110 Euros. This time we had it without a router so we don’t know if you have to pay for shipping the router by yourself or if they send you a return envelope.
Similar to Spain, the customer service is great. One day we had issues with the connection and after sending them an email, in 30 minutes it was running again. Bear in mind that it may take up to 3 days to receive the sim card, so order it in advance.
We hope you find this info helpful. Let us know what else would you like to know about living and travelling with a van.
