How to offer WiFi on board abroad while avoiding high roaming costs.

We thought it was interesting to publish this article because of the high demand and doubts that exist nowadays in the coach sector regarding the Wifi service on board abroad.

Currently, there are many coach companies that use routes outside Spain , in different European countries, and it is precisely in these cases that we value the Wifi service on board the most , why? Simply because the vast majority of passengers traveling in Europe turn off data service on their phones and tablets to avoid high roaming charges.
In this case, the buses carrying passengers armed with their Smartphones, but unable to be online. These passengers only connect via wifi networks provided by courtesy of hotels, cafes, restaurants, etc. … and thanks to them they can receive and send their messages.
And it is precisely in this context that the Wifi network plays a very important role on board the coach, imagine the value that it can have for passengers to be permanently connected to the Internet all the way without the need to search for open Wi-Fi networks. Obviously, this is a clear and obvious value that considerably enriches the offer of the transport company, but here we are faced with a barrier: roaming.

 How to avoid roaming charges?

Everyone knows scary stories about roaming and high costs, cases where transport companies have generated high bills. So how can we offer Wifi service on board coaches in multiple countries?

The answer is to use multi-card routers. These devices allow us to use SIM cards from different countries, obviously at local prices. The procedure is very simple: equip our router with SIM cards from the countries of destination and the router itself will take care of using one SIM card or the other depending on the country where the coach is located at that moment, and all this working with local data without the need to incur roaming.

Currently there are routers that we can introduce up to 8 SIM cards, which will provide Wifi service up to 8 different countries, and for more specific and demanding services that require more countries, it is possible to daisy chain so we can double the number of countries, but they will continue to work uniquely as if it were a single device.

Following this, many readers will think that it is a good alternative to avoid roaming charges, but inevitably they will have doubts on how to manage the set of SIM cards that we need to provide this service in several countries. Currently, telephone companies have rechargeable data SIM cards in all countries, which greatly simplifies this issue, because they offer the possibility of recharging SIM cards via the Internet, so we will have data cards available at all times. recharged and only pay for what we use, quite the opposite of telephone contracts where there is a minimum monthly plan, regardless of whether or not we have used the Gb committed to the plan.