Best Prepaid iPhone Plan in Buenos Aires (Argentina)

In my quest to find unlimited prepaid data wherever I go, I present to you the results of my trials and errors in Argentina!

Finding a prepaid sim card with unlimited data in Buenos Aires was, to say the least, not easy. After browsing multiple websites in English and Spanish (keep in mind I don't speak Spanish), I was under the assumption that the best deal for me would be to get a Movistar sim card. I, thus, went to a Movistar store where I bought a prepaid sim card for 50 Argentinian pesos (=US$10) (it came loaded with 10 pesos of credit) and was told that I would be able to use their unlimited internet plan for 1 pesos per day.

It took about an hour for the card to become active but data access never worked. I went back to the store where I was told that customer service was handled by a dedicated support store to which I went (you have to be ready to lose time when you want your prepaid sim card to work). I was given there various APN settings that I all tried thanks to the Rebel Sim card website and their custom APN configuration page (you could also try the original unlockit APN changer website but it is now limited in functionality). Nothing worked. So, I resorted to a different carrier and went to a Claro store.

Bitcasa & The Promise Of Infinite Cloud Storage

Bitcasa looks like the Holy Grail of Cloud Computing. I think they totally dig what today's computing lacks in terms of ease of use & backup automation.

One thing that I hate is to install a new computer. It's something I usually try to avoid for as long as possible and probably the reason why I don't upgrade my hardware as often as I'd like to. Going through a whole day of data migration, settings troubleshooting etc. is just something that nobody, no matter how computer savvy they are, is looking forward to.

The promise of Bitcasa is to change today's paradigm by getting rid entirely of the local storage concept: EVERYTHING IS IN THE CLOUDS. You, therefore, needn't worry about downloading all your data from your online storage service (such as SugarSync or Dropbox), a task which can take days if not weeks when installing a new computer. You just access it in real time through the Internet.

Affordable Data Roaming In Europe With Blau.de

As I mentioned it in a previous post, you probably know by now that whenever I travel abroad, I use local prepaid sim cards as not only the cost of data roaming with my main mobile carrier (Orange France) is outrageous but adding a data roaming option is just a nightmare.

The advent of the Internet and even more so the mobile Internet have changed the way we interact with the world and in particular the way we travel. I can't fathom being in a foreign country without having access to Google Maps on my iPhone. In fact, it is probably the situation where Google Maps is most useful. So, why aren't our mobile carriers allowing us to use our smart-phones this way when traveling abroad?

In my opinion, data roaming plans are nothing more than a joke. With Orange France, I have the option to activate a 7-day plan for €35 with 50Mb of data in Europe or 34Mb in the rest of the world. I'm sorry but 50 Mb is a joke nowadays. And Orange France makes it even harder to use this data roaming plan as you can't activate it in advance and when you do activate it, it can take between 1 mn to 48 hours to start working. And of course, you can't subscribe to such a plan for 2 weeks in a row: you have to renew it after the first 7 days have expired (and sometimes end up without a data roaming plan for 48 hours between two 7-day periods).

Of course, Orange France will tell you that roaming abroad costs them so much money that they have no other option than to charge such premiums to their loyal contract customers. So, can anyone explain how a small virtual mobile carrier such as Blau.de is able to offer the same roaming plan for €4.99 to their prepaid customers? Yes, you're not dreaming: 7 times cheaper for prepaid customers compared to the price charged by Orange France to customers on a 2-year contract.

Combined with Blau.de offering for voice roaming in Europe: 50 minutes for 7 days priced at  €4.99, you get something like €40 per month for 200 voice minutes and 200 Mb of data for roaming all over Europe. Compare this to the €45 my wife pays on a monthly contract with Orange France for 120 voice minutes in France only and 1Gb of data in France only (plus unlimited text messages though), and you can almost reach the conclusion that it is cheaper to use a German mobile carrier in roaming mode in France than a French carrier. Isn't this completely insane?

I sincerely hope that data roaming prices will drop in the near future, granting us Europeans what I would call a true "Freedom of Information Technologies."

Many thanks to Google Translate for allowing me to access Blau.de website in English!

Bouygues Telecom France Prepaid iPad Data Plan: #Fail

The French mobile carrier rumored to have the best customer service offers an iPad specific prepaid data plan. You can get unlimited data for a day for €6 and unlimited data for a month for €29.90. The only problem is that their tutorial on how to create an account after purchasing an iPad specific sim card is erroneous at best. Once you have purchased and installed their micro-sim card in your iPad, Bouygues Telecom instructs you to download their iPad app from the App Store although there is no iPad specific Bouygues Telecom app there. There's an iPhone specific app but it is not functional.

The €9.90 sim card gives you 2 days of unlimited data. After that, you'll have to create an account using Safari (as their iPhone app does not exist): any url entered in Safari when connected to the cellular network will direct you to the carrier specific page in order to create an account. The only problem is that it fails every time you attempt to do so. So, you're basically stuck calling their 1034 line where, apparently, nobody has heard of their iPad specific offers. Great for the best customer service carrier in France!

Prepaid iPhone Data Plan Deals In France & Germany

For the tech-savvy traveler that doesn't want to spend thousands of dollars on data roaming charges, the best option is to go prepaid when traveling abroad.

The best deal in France if you have an unlocked iPhone is to buy a prepaid "SFR La Carte" sim card. They have a €24 plan valid for 20 days with unlimited data and €10 calling credit.

One of the best deals in Germany is blau.de which offers a €9.90 plan with 1Gb of data valid for 30 days or a €19.90 plan with unlimited data valid for 30 days. Blau sim cards can be purchased in supermarkets and can even be activated while roaming outside Germany!

The Holy Grail Of Synchronization

As you might have figured, I'm a bit of a geek and if there is one field of computing that my friends agree I'm knowledgeable about it is data synchronization. Until we see the day where cloud storage becomes mainstream and total (by that I mean literally running a virtual machine in the clouds with not even on OS on the local host), we will have to deal with fragmented services. As a matter of fact, if you want to back-up your data online or synchronize it among different computers, you will need to use different services. Having synced data across multiple computers and phones for years, I consider myself quite proficient (with my usual modesty) in this field. So, here is what I would suggest for anyone that would like to keep multiple devices in sync:

- For Contacts, Calendar, Notes & Tasks: In my experience and as much as I hate to admit it, nothing beats Microsoft Exchange. There are great companies that offer hosted Exchange services for a small fee. I've been using 123Together.com for the past 3 years and have been very happy with them. For less than US$ 15 per month, I get a great service and I don't have to deal with the expenses and maintenance costs of having my own Exchange server installed on a local computer.

Thanks to 123Together, I can keep all my contacts, Calendar, Notes & Tasks in sync across 3 macs, one PC, one iPad (soon 2) and all my iPhones. Their monthly service also includes an Outlook 2007 license. As for macs, iPads and iPhones, they're natively compatible with Exchange 2007.  If you would like to sync your Notes and Tasks on your iPhone as well, I recommend the IMExchange app that works like a charm (Notes & Tasks aren't supported natively on iOS devices).

I have tried different solutions in the past but none work as well as Microsoft Exchange. MobileMe is unreliable at best, tethered syncing from one device to another sucks big time. Gmail offers the ability to push sync contacts, calendars & emails natively to your iPhone but it won't support desktop syncing (unless you get a premium account).

- For syncing files and data backup: Besides making frequent backups of my computers on external hard drives, I also use an online backup service. My service of choice is SugarSync. Not only does it allow me to backup all my data online, it also lets me sync folders across multiple computers. A pure blessing when using multiple computers! I can save a file in a synced folder on my iMac at work and when I get home in the evening it will be sitting in the same folder on my home PC. SugarSync also released an iPhone and Android app which lets you access all of you synced data from your phone and view or send it from anywhere. In case of a fire at your home, all your important files will still be available and retrievable on their servers!

Dropbox offers a similar service but is a lot less flexible when it comes to syncing multiple folders or different sets of folders from one computer to another.

If you have further questions, don't hesitate to drop it in the comments, I'll be more than happy to help!

Orange France & iPhone

I am so frustrated by the rumors about what Orange France is going to offer for the iPhone in terms of data plans! They apparently want to release a 100 Mb plan for most of their iPhone plans and only a 1 Go DATA plan for the most expensive of their offer!

If this offer sees the light of day, I will have no other option but to believe that the people working in Marketing at Orange have no clue about what they're selling! Maybe they should try using a cell phone with a DATA plan in the first place before thinking about selling ridiculous offers!
Haven't they realized that people crave for unlimited plans? That's how the Internet revolution started in the first place! Just look back 10 years in the past! The answer is right there!

Uber-Communication

The rise of new technologies has lead to the advent of a new way of communicating.

Whenever someone sends me an email or leaves a message on my voicemail, I don't feel bound to answer them using the same means of communication they used to contact me. Answering a long voicemail can sometimes take a 10 second text message. Using Twitter to organize a dinner with friends can sometimes be much more convenient than email (that is when it comes to a dinner with tech-savvy friends of course).

Maybe new technologies have given us the opportunity to become lazy communicators in the sense that we now have a tendency to use the easiest way of communicating (not necessarily the most politically correct one) in a particular situation. However, the decrease in form has also given us the ability to interact a lot more and with many more people than before.

I can't even begin to think of what's going to come next in terms of communication as there are more and more options available... To name of few: Landline phone, cellular phone, email, text messaging, instant messaging (text, audio, video), Skype, VoIP, Web 2.0 social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Seesmic, Jaiku, Lindedin, MySpace, Orkut etc...).

Who could ever deny that what differentiates us from animals is language?