Second Opinions

Surviving Exotic Islands and New Hampshire

By John Hokkanen

Dot coms come and dot coms go, and the one I was working for disappeared a couple of months ago. With the kids out of school for the summer, my wife and I decided that a trip abroad would be a wonderful vacation. In order to share our experiences with the grandparents and friends, we set up a Web site.

A great concept, right? Well, in order to implement this idea (which can be seen at www.hokkanen.com), I had to connect my laptop to the Internet from all over the world. One thing is certain: Advance planning is the most important factor to success in connecting while abroad. I was fortunate to have the time to adequately prepare for a two month vacation. I also had the leisure in knowing that if my planning was inadequate, then at least an occasional outage would have only nominal impact.

Be flexible

Flexibility in seeking connection alternatives (e.g., cyber cafes) should be part of your planning for a trip abroad -- especially where critical business communications are at stake. If you can, test your plans in advance on a shorter trip, or on a leisure trip. It will increase your confidence and help things go more smoothly.

You'll need to address certain critical issues: choice of laptop, power, telecom connectivity, ISP selection, and cybercafes. Dealing with each of these with a lot of forethought will help keep you online. Failure to address each can result in the opposite.

Laptop

I already owned a beautiful Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop with a 15 inch screen, DVD, and modem. Unfortunately, this heavyweight machine weighed in, with transformer, at more than 10 pounds -- simply too heavy to lug all around the world.

Rather than try to maintain the larger screen with a four-pound notebook, I opted for an ultralight subnotebook, the Sony Picturebook (PCG-C1XS).

It had the critical elements that I needed: 1) 10 GB harddisk; 2) built-in modem; 3) PCMCIA card for plugging in a portable CD-ROM that could be packed in baggage; 4) external video port for making some presentations; a USB port for a mouse; and 5) a built-in digital camera.

The last item might have dubious value to business travelers, but was essential for my holiday tour. I searched Bizrate for on-line companies selling it, and I bought it from www.ecost.com.

The laptop comes with an ultralightweight battery that only lasts about an hour and a half. Because batteries can fail, purchasing a spare one is a critical redundancy and strongly recommended. I purchased a double-sized battery for extra time while in the air.

In addition to the battery, you also must deal with power issues. Simply put, buy a laptop whose transformer works with 220 voltage. (Once, in London, a transformer failed and I was instantly off-line. Looking for another transformer in a foreign city can be a major event.)

Fortunately, both Dell and Sony laptops run off 220V, and the likelihood of a transformer failure is slim. If you must use a transformer, make certain that it is rated for continuous use and electronic devices (i.e., better power quality), and bring a spare.

Because there are about 50 different power outlet plugs worldwide, make sure to bring the appropriate power plug converters. Check out one of the numerous Internet sites for mobile computing (e.g., www.igo.com) and foreign travel. I like Magellan best. Not only does this company have a range of foreign travel products, its country-by-country listing for power and phone adapters is the best one on the Web. You can create a list in about 10 minutes.

Telephone

To repeat: Physical phone adapters are essential. They all provide standard RJ-11 telephone jack outputs, allowing you to plug the phone and the RJ-11 plug for your machine into the same jack. A general purpose connection kit is a worthwhile investment because they offer retractable phone cords, connectors, and, most importantly, a digital phone line tester.

These testers are an absolute requirement as many foreign hotels do not have modem plugs on the phones in the rooms and the lines will burn up your modem if you plug your laptop into them. A tester provides surge protection as well as peace of mind in knowing that you are not going to fry your computer. The one item that I wish I had bought was a digital line converter; these devices convert the levels appropriate for standard modems.

Assuming you have phone line access, my experience has been quite good in getting a stable Internet connection in western Europe and Asia.

The phone switches might not be modern, and you may encounter limited speed (e.g., 24 Kbps), but the lines usually are stable enough to easily work for an extended period.

Note, however, that many hotels charge by the minute even for local calls. The rates are not the astronomical rates that are charged for international calls, but one might pay, for example, up to $10 U.S. per hour to a Malaysian hotel just to use the phone.

ISP

The question of Internet access abroad is easily answered: AT&T Business Network. This network was formerly the IBM global network, and it truly is a world network; I simply accessed the www.ibm.net URL and was redirected to the current AT&T site.

Ironically, AT&T's WorldNet service will only work in the United States, and, if you already have an existing WorldNet account (as I did), you end up paying for two accounts unless you cancel your WorldNet account. Download the dialer program onto your laptop and create the account while in the United States to obtain the U.S.-based rates.

With the AT&T Business Network, you can access the Internet from your PC from most major cities in the world , via a local phone call. However, AT&T charges about $6 U.S. per hour for this privilege. But given the lack of alternatives, I am glad happy to pay this modest fee.

If you have special software on your laptop (e.g., virtual private networking or tunneling software) such that you must use your laptop to access your corporate network, then you may not have any alternative (e.g., cybercafes). The good news is that the network is of very high quality and the connection speeds are generally very good (assuming the particular segment of the telephone network does not limit one).

Phone Home

The immediate need in most travel situations is to call back to the United States. AT&T, Sprint, and MCI can provide such access by phone card, billing the call to your existing long distance account. This is far more preferable to, and far less expensive than, calling via hotels (at four times the cost) or pay phones (at potentially four times the hassle).

For local calls, many countries have phone cards that can be purchased at drug stores and newsstands. These work very well for locating hotels and arranging meetings, but I have experienced difficulties in making international calls with them even when they had adequate "units."

If you are calling between foreign countries, then the only reasonable answer I found was AT&T's Global Calling Card. This is a special calling card that is billed directly to your credit card.

Calling charges are rated on a zone-by-zone basis similar to the shipping formulas used by UPS. You don't need an AT&T account to get one of these cards, but you must obtain the special form via fax, and then fax it back to them at least a few days before you plan to use the card.

AT&T also sends a complete package of materials about two weeks later with all of the local access numbers. The calling card worked wonderfully and gave me the connectivity that I required.

Cell Phones

Cell phones pose other difficulties. First, American cell phone technology is different from Europe, and, assuming one has access to a global cell phone network, one must nevertheless switch out a chip in the phone. (I met some Finnish lawyers who said they used their Nokia phones while in the U.S. this way.)

Second, cell phones may be confiscated by some countries. For example, Indonesia's customs' form states that foreign cell phones are prohibited. However, cell phones may be readily purchased in most countries, and, due to the widespread vandalism of public pay phones in some cities (e.g., Jakarta), an extended stay might warrant such a purchase.

Internet Cafes

Internet cafes can be found in the most remote places for several reasons. In industrialized countries, they are available because of the demand, and are relatively cheap. The least expensive one I have ever found was in London; it seated about 250 people and the cost averaged about $2 U.S. per hour.

The really interesting fact is that in the third world, a cyber cafe is a cash cow. For example, in Bali, one can take a 20 mile taxicab ride for less than $5 U.S. The petrol alone probably is $2.50 U.S. which is a good indicator of the value of labor. At the same time, a cybercafe can charge $6 U.S .per hour and 30 cents a page for printing. For the locals, it's a money-printing machine; for visitors, they cannot access the Internet any cheaper even using their own computer.

The result is that if you are traveling to a tourist destination, you will be able to find Internet access even though, ironically, few locals understand or use it because it is simply too expensive for them. For example, even on the remote Perhentian Islands off Malaysia in the South China Sea, I found $6 U.S. per hour Internet access via 14,000 bps cellular modem. Modem speed was not the limiting factor; because the power (via diesel generator) was on only a few hours per day, one had to note the cybercafes' hours.

Though I was able to quickly located a cybercafe upon arrival, one can even do advance planning in this regard.

Numerous sites on the Internet provide country-by-country listings of cybercafes; student-oriented tour books like "Let's Go" even provide Internet access in their guides. For example, take a look at www.netcafeguide.com, or www.cybercafes.com.

Finally, some places like Australia even have national cybercafes (such as www.globalgossip.com), and, in Darwin, Australia, suggests, cybercafes and aboriginal art are now side-by-side.

Test First

If you intend to use cybercafes to access e-mail, be sure to test your Web-based e-mail access before you travel. If your e-mail server does not have such capability you may wish to forward your e-mail to a Eeb-based e-mail account for your travel period. It was clear that the two most frequently used free e-mail services abroad were Hotmail and Yahoo mail.

I even decided to forwarded all of my incoming e-mail to two accounts. The first was the account that I would use via a cybercafe or via my PC (Microsoft Outlook) while I was on the road.

The second e-mail account was an archive account that I set up to capture a duplicate copy of every message in the event that I would have a copy of all incoming e-mails in the event of a catastrophic event (e.g., theft of my PC or failure of my hard disk or PC due to improper baggage handling). Unfortunately, my e-mail server used a non-standard port instead of the standard Web port 80, and so I was unable to use some cybercafes.

Exceeding Expectations

The global Internet work always seems to exceed my expectations. Today, it is available and reliable all over the planet. Traveling abroad may take a little advance planning today, but staying connected in this wired world has never been easier.

John Hokkanen is an Internet strategist. Web: www.hokkanen.com.