Hi,

I am hoping to travel to Costa Teguise to stay in the Sands Beach Resort this summer. However I am self employed and will need to be online for a few hours each day. I know the villas don't have internet access and as I mostly work when my little ones are sleeping I won't be able to work in the reception area, where I know they have wifi signal.

Therefore can anyone recommend a dongle I could use and does anyone know what the signal in the Sands is like. I would be gutted to buy a dongle, only for it not to work.

I would really appreciate any help and advice on this matter.

Thanks so much

Hi tabbykat,

You can have usb dongle 3g without contract with these 2 spanish providers (use google translate) :

simyo - http://www.simyo.es
yoigo - http://www.yoigo.es

You can also rent one, but I think it will cost you less 1 month with one of the 2 above, than 1 week rented on the island with somebody...

Enjoy your holidays

Katia

my uk vodaphone contract gives me 35meg per day free in Lanzarote (anywhere in europe), which is plenty to check/send a few e-mails a day. And I can also make calls using my inclusive minutes for a connection fee of 75p.

If find it gives me everything I need to run my business on tickover whilst away.

just a suggestion to think about as an alternative.

Also, if you are going to buy a sim in Lanzarote I am pretty sure you need to take your passport with you now.

based in playa blanca but pretty sure they can sort you out

http://www.gandy-draper.com/internet-in-playa-blanca/

send them message

Have just returned from CT and had the same requirement as you. I did try Visanta in Arrecife but they were unable to help and suggested I try Movistar. Not all of these shops deal with pre-paid dongles (I had a good time trying to explain to the shop staff what a dongle was!) and only residents can buy them on contract. I did finally buy one from the Movistar shop behind the Eurospar in Arrecife (opposite the old old bus station on the Medular) but it took two trips as I didn't realise I needed to take my passport (after the Madrid bombings, all pre-paid USB sticks, mobile phone accounts, etc, have to be registered to the purchaser in an anti terrorist compaign). The dongle, with 10 euros of credit cost me 40 euros. There is a Movistar in CT but it only deals with contract purchase. Have fun!

I'm just back from 12 weeks at Sands Beach and used a Movistar dongle quite successfully. I bought it in a Movistar shop in Arrecife just behind the front (Canalejas I think). I paid 39 euros but this included 10 euros credit. The purchase itself took a while as only 1 member of staff spoke any English and my Spanish does not go as far as technology. They were very friendly in trying to be helpful though. The actual device is a "Movistar ZTE MF110 Modem USB" (I've just got the box out and read it). It installed on my Notebook easily and performed fine but it did seem to be expensive to run and I was unable to keep track of how much credit I was using/had left even although I did create an account on movistar.es. I think it costs 3 euros each time you connect and you get about 30Mb with that. You just get an SMS message to say that your credit is below 3 euros and you know to top it up. In practice I got to check my email and do about an hour of browsing to use up 30Mb. It was easy to get it topped-up - I just took the SIM number to a local supermarket (Hiperdino) and bought 20 or 30 euros at a time. I think I topped-up about 80 euros in my 12 weeks but was only using it once a day 2 or 3 times a week. I know, though, that Sands Beach are working towards having Wi-Fi available in the Apartments but they could not say when.

If you are taking your UK service provider dongle do make sure it is enabled for data roaming, not just roaming on voice calls, I got caught out on this last month and that was after being told that roaming was enabled, but as it turned out only on voice.
Otherwise plan B dine somewhere with free wi-fi ,but watch the waistline