our australian Adventure - Part 4 - Communications

100823 Brisbane Australia

Communication set ups are all about outcomes.  You need to decide what you want to happen, set out your goals and then build the structure to accomplish those goals.

I want;

To be able to make calls to anywhere in Canada from anywhere in the world for so little money that I need not think about the cost.

To be able to receive calls from Canada (at certain times) from staff and business contacts without the caller knowing or caring where the call ends up.

I want to be able to use my iPhone in Australia without ringing up any 'roaming' charges slapped on by Rogers back home.

I want to always have email access available to me.

I want to be able to use my iPhone and iPad for accessing the web all the time.

I want to have Internet access for my Apple Macbook notebook.

In summary - to have the same communications abilities I have in downtown Toronto.

So this is what we did:

1. Cell phones 

Lynn, William and I each got a new 'unlocked' iPhone 4 directly from the Apple store.  It cost more than buying a Rogers or other provider 'locked' phone - hundreds more actually - but it was the smart thing to do.  I describes some of this exercise in an earlier post.

We contacted Rogers and had them transfer our old iPhone 3 numbers over to the new iPhone 4's.  Note here - Apple will give you a new form factor 'micro SIM' for the asking for free.  Rogers charges $10 for them.  And be aware that your old SIM is a mini-SIM which means in the tortured vinacular of the marketing world, it's bigger than the one you need for the new iPhone 4.  So be sure to go to Apple and have them give you a micro-SIM.

In the car on the way home from the Apple store my son had the new phones working on the old cell numbers.

Rogers did not secure us with a renewed extended 2 or 3 year contract.  

Upon arrival in Sydney after a little research we decided that Telstra had the best coverage.  We walked into a Telstra store (strangely the major cell services have more outlets in Australia than we have Tim Horton Coffee Shops in Canada).

For $30 Australian, about $27CDN we got 3gbs of data service for both of our iPads.  Unfortunately they were out of Micro SIMs for iPhone 4s.  We tried Vodaphone and Virgin and others, no one had them in stock.  So we went to the Sydney Apple store.  

They had 'Yes Optus' micro SIMs for free again ready to hand to us.

We then took them next door to the Optus store and got signed up with a no contract Australian wide calling package and data plan of 500mb for each of our three phones for $50AUS each.  Buying the $50 plan using the Apple voucher thing gave us double the data, 1gb each for a month.

In most places in the world there are these cell phone services which include data service that can be purchased without a contract (at least in the places I want to go - nothing available in the absolute back of beyond I suspect).

Because we have the same provider, calls to each other via cell phone are free and don't count towards air time.

But a local cell phone number is nice, if the office has an emergency or the family back home absolutely positively need to reach us.  But it won't be me finding out how much international long distance costs on these babies.  

Some people will purchase oversees calling cards to allow them to contact the office.

I'm on the phone with staff every Monday morning on a conference call for two and half to three hours.  I wonder how many calling cards I would burn thru?  And besides this is not so cheap that I won't notice.

The answer is Skype on the iPhone.  This works on the Blackberry, Andriod and other smart phones too.  

The simple way is to get a free Skype account, install the Skype client and then have your people back home use their own Skype accounts to communicate with you.  Cost per call?  Zero.  Cost per hour of call? Zero.  Now we're talking.

So my iPhone (or any smart phone more or less) can have Skype installed and it becomes a free world phone.  It rings when people call.  

Not exactly free, some of my data service megabytes are used up but only very few  - Skype has a low data demand.  So cheap enough that I don't care.

I was on a conference call with 9 of my team on Monday.  The meeting lasted for 2.75 hours. I used my cell phone with Skype.  Some of them used Skype some dialed in.  Cost almost nothing - I think we paid perhaps .89 of a cent per minute for the peole that called in from their land lines.

I also want people without Skype to be able to reach me anytime. (subject to the idea that this is vacation sometimes).  So I added to my Skype account an added feature called 'Skype In' where they give me a phone number (in the US they don't offer Canadian numbers yet) and my mom can call this number in Buffalo New York and it rings my Skype client running on my cell phone in Brisbane - hi mom!

Cost? Looks like mom has to pay long distance to Buffalo, sorry mom. The land line to Skype connection time costs me $$20 for 3 months with no per minute charge.  Again, so close to free that I don't care.

I went this one further.  I love my mom but getting her to speed dial in another phone number for me, well that's not on.  So instead I programmed my phone system to ring this Buffalo number at the same time it rings my office desk set.  Since I am not going to answer my office desk set being I'm away, my Skype rings in my pocket.  

Voila! You call my regular old direct office number, or call the main office number and put in my extension and (provided I'm awake - 14 hour time difference) I'll answer.

Another goal handled - colleagues and business contacts can reach me by calling the same way they are used to but I am as near as doesn't matter in the back of beyond.  And it's cheap.

The last piece of the puzzle - I want to call people in Toronto cheap.  If they aren't Skype users then how am I going to get their phone to ring?

Skype to the rescue again.  

I added Skype's Ring Out service to my account, a $0.017 charge per minute for calls made to North America.  So I pick up my iPhone go to the Skype apps, open the dial pad, dial dad's cell phone number and..... it rings.  I had to change to dad since I've never known my mother to answer her cell phone.  

The kicker to all this?  The sound quality is usually better than using my cell phone in my living room in Toronto.  Who could want for more?

Mission accomplished on the voice communications front.

2. Computer Internet connection

In our house exchange criteria we are very specific that we can only exchange where we will have Internet access.

It turns out there is Internet access and the type of Internet access we are used to.

Internet service is purchased in various capacities and it available in a home or hotel in various ways. 

We have grown accustomed to watching iTunes movies downloaded on the spot in the evening.  We pull music from our servers at home.  We ... Use a lot of data.

In the first two days of our arival we had hit the bandwidth cap permitted for the month 12gb).  Told ya we used a lot.  In fact the home owner had arranged the cap to be increased from their usual 2gb up to 12gb for us before we arrived.  

So, my son had the pleasure of working with the home owner and the service provider to get the cap raised to a proper 200gb per month service.  It took a long time on the phone and days to sort out.

This can be a real problem.  When you hit the bandwidth cap your Internet service slows to a crawl - it still works but it is so slow as to be useless.  

Check with your destination and ask about Internet speed and caps - the people you speak to will not have a single clue what you are talking about and the information will almost certainly be completely unattainable but it is worth a try before hand.

In the mean time, with Internet service being like oxygen we were glad to have our iPad and iPhones. As much as I love it, I can still work much faster on the MacBook than on the iPad.  My son found an app for the iPad that allows me to share the 3G data service of the iPad with my MacBook.  It works via the USB cable or via Bluetooth.  Essentially he made my iPad a wifi hotspot.

4.5mbits down and about .5mbits up, it worked fine.  I was a little worried that I would use up my monthly allotment of bandwidth from Telstra but I came only half way to the limit for my several days of use.

I could have also tethered my iPhone to the MacBook using native apps but the Optus people wanted additional fees for that.

3. WiFi 

Once my son got the Internet situation sorted out the next problem was one of Internet service delivery.  We take WiFi service for granted.  But our home owner had a single PC and an Ethernet cable connected from his DSL modem directly into his PC.  No WiFi.

Fine I can plug the MacBook into the Internet with the cable from the modem but that doesn't help our iPads or my wife's MacBook Air.  We need WiFi for these devices.

Again my son to the rescue.

He set the MacBook up with Internet sharing using the WiFi card of the Mac to act as a little wireless access point.

The Mac provided WiFi to all these other devices and it shared it's Internet connection.

4. Resource Access

Phone service, email, web, cheap...check check check and check. 

But the final most important thing required to be productive when away is access to the information systems.  It is the same issue if you want to work from the cottage or the living room.  Your information systems must be prepared either from the ground up or with add on access to allow your work to be efficient in processing data while you are away.

I will leave this for another post.  I am writing this from the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in somewhere Queensland.  Lynn and Will should be finished their koala petting session soon.  I get to sit by the river, in the warm, not hot, sunshine and listen to the birds sing.