Saturday, January 18, 2014

Tech issues

Before I left the US, I had contacted T-Mobile about my phone service. I was thinking that I'd have to purchase a SIM card to use here in Europe. T-Mobile's Global Service is pretty good, and it includes unlimited texting and web service. Although I usually kept data roaming off while in the US, I had to enable it once I got over here. It's really convenient to be able to keep in touch with the family back home.
I've been keeping in touch with the family via text and Skype, along with Facebook updates. However, during my downtime in my room I wanted to catch up on my Netflix and Hulu shows, as well as listen to Pandora. Since those services won't work outside of the US, I had to find a work around. Fortunately, both my phone and my tablet have VPN capabilities. I purchased an account with www.hidemyass.com, which gave me a US based VPN IP address so that Netflix and other media services would think that I'm located in the continental US. Success!
T-Mobile's Global service only applied to my phone, however. Although my tablet (Nexus 7) has it's own SIM card, it's not covered under a "Simple Plan" which provides global service. So I'm able to use it on a WiFi network only. Out of range of a WiFi signal, I've had to enable the Hotspot on my phone and connect my tablet to it.

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