If you are visiting Marbella from abroad for a short time on vacation or business and need internet access either with wifi or 3g, rather than paying costly roaming fees with your provider back home, you have other options.
Yes, most hotels will provide either a free wifi or paid wifi, but the paid options can be quite costly and if for example you get free wifi from the hotel, this means if you go out and about and need wifi access, then you are tied to the hotels wifi network. This is not really suitable for most internet dependent people.
Wifi Access in Marbella and Surrounding Areas
There is though an English speaking company in Marbella that provides good, multiple wifi hotspots across most parts of the Costa del Sol. They are called Mercury Internet and they have over the last couple of years put in a serious infrastructure network of wifi hotspots across the coast between Malaga and Estepona.
Click here to see a coverage maps of their wifi hotspot network.
Affordable and Flexible Wifi Hotspots
Packages range from 1 hour, 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month and 3 months. Of course they do have longer term contracts available if you are staying longer but the short term prices are very reasonable. Their speeds are decent for general internet use but most importantly you are not tied to a specific hotspot, you can freely roam the coast using the wifi hotspot.
How about Short Term 3G Contracts and not wifi?
As most readers will know, I was one of the first to get the ipad on the launch day in Spain and had a terrible time even getting the standard 3G contract through Vodafone in Spain. I ended up bastardising one of my spare sim cards into the shape of a micro sim card and activating a totally different non ipad 3g tariff.
So, the result is that I dont even think its possible to get a short term 3G contract during a short term stay in Spain. I believe the minimum term for any 3g contract (ipad and non ipad) is 18 months.
If you are here for a short term, the a paid wifi service like the one Mercury offers is perfect and disposable.
Good article, something that I had looked in to when I first visited Spain.
I found that there is some prepaid 3G providers that are affordable. One for example is Masmovil.
Rgds
John
Hi John,
Yes you are totally right, there is a web site at http://www.masmovil.es/mobile-internet which is in english and looks like they have various wireless packages.
Lots of people are taking their blackberries and iphones on holiday and with the recent advent of low priced netbooks, people are needing more and more wireless access.
I will be checking out the masmovil service too and will do a write up. Thanks for the tip!!
Craig Edmonds
On the UK Ebay site, there is a Spanish seller offering SIM’s from a number of Spanish suppliers offering pay as you go 3G wireless access. Even if you don’t buy the SIM’s from that seller, it is a useful source of information on Spanish 3G PAYG.
Hi Richard,
Nice one. I did do a quick search on ebay for the following http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_kw=Spanish&_kw=3Gand there is a few pay as you go sims by the looks of it.
I think one of the things I would be weary about is the cost per minute for using it though and how it gets topped up. I do know that to top up a pay as you go mobile in Spain you just walk into OpenCor and give your number and an amount and it gets refilled.
My only concern with some of these pay as you go 3g packages is the usage charges on a per minute basis.
I am not sure how long €30 would last.
Craig Edmonds