Getting our internet in Portugal

Well, far from being well prepared for our travels using the 3 network ‘Feel at Home’ scheme for our phones and mifi, I completely overlooked that Portugal is , as yet anyway, NOT part of the scheme! hmy:

So just before we entered Portugal from Spain we realised that we were going to be ‘roaming’. Now, while we travel I feel it necessary to check emails a couple of times a day at least and deal with anything that comes up. If any of you have contacted me in the past about assistance regarding this website etc you’ll know that my response is usually pretty quick….

So feeling a bit out of reach we decided that we would need to get to a town and buy a local sim card for mifi data use. A quick roaming Google revealed that the network with the best coverage throughout Portugal is MEO and they have quite a few shops dotted about. The first town that we got to that could have had the right place was on a Saturday afternoon and the shop was shut - typical! Walking back to our parking area we happened across a kiosk that sold a few phone cards. Ashamed to say that I know hardly any Portuguese, I couldn’t seem to get the seller to understand that I wanted a data card rather than a phone card. Anyway for 5€ I thought it would be worth trying one in our mifi.

Back at the van I installed the card and turned the unit on - first problem, it asked for a pin number. The number wasn’t a problem as the code is revealed by scratching a panel off on the sim card holder. The problem was what to do with it as the mifi has no keypad to enter a number - obviously!

I remembered that in my box of gadgets I had an old unlocked mobile phone and being that ‘old’ it took a normal sized sim card. With the new card inserted luckily it had enough battery power to turn on and by going into ‘settings’ I was able to disable the pin number requirement. Once done and back in the mifi the card worked but wouldn’t connect - this being due to the APN in the mifi being set up for 3 network. I left it at that for the time being until I could get a proper data card and maybe get the shop to install it in the mifi for me - ever hopeful .

On the Sunday we had arrived at another free Aire in another town and luckily I was able to pick up some free town wifi to find out where the local MEO shop was - about 250 mtrs away So on the Monday morning I popped in, taking my mifi with me. With no language and the shop assistant not speaking English I had to open the mifi and point to the sim card to explain what I wanted (really must try harder with the language).

At a very reasonable 14.99€ the card came with 15GB of data and lasts 15 days. The card has to be recharged at a MEO shop.



Back at the van and card installed I again got the PIN request so went through the old phone routine again which fixed it.

Having previously used the free local wifi I had found out how to change the APN to suit the MEO card:

Access the mifi backend by connecting to 192.168.1.1 with it connected to the PC by usb lead and enter its admin panel (password needed which is usually ‘admin’)

Go into ‘Profile Management’ and set up a new profile so that a new APN can be entered. (The APN for 3 network is ‘3internet’ but for MEO it is just ‘internet’)

Save profile and exit.

Job done and it connects a treat B)