Mobile internet


Peace Corps / Thursday, April 14th, 2011

I have this, well, problem. I live in an apartment without a phone line. While some of you who know me, know this might actually be a plus because of my hatred of phones, it actually isn’t good. Without a phone line, I cannot have a DSL hookup in my apartment (or ADSL as I think it’s more common here).

Some of my site-mates have called me lazy because I haven’t gotten an internet hookup yet in my apartment. I’ve tried to explain to them the process required to have this done. To do so, I would need my counterpart to contact my landlady in Moscow and get it approved to add the phone line to her apartment. After that, I’d have to wait for that to be installed and then wait for it to be hooked up to the ADSL. Things like this take time in Ukraine.

I have a cable hookup in my apartment, but I’ve been unsuccessful in convincing my counterpart that I can get internet through a cable line.

It doesn’t matter too much, though. I have found a substitute. Well, not a decent substitute for ADSL internet, but I have internet. I bought a cell-modem and it allows me to get online and read the news and whatnot.

However, there’s a small loophole in the system which seems to be limited to my town of Konotop. I can buy a modem for 200UAH and it comes with two months of free, uncapped internet. After that, I can pay 100UAH/month to have 1GB/month of data transfer or 120UAH/month for 5GB/month of data transfer. Elsewhere in Ukraine, this modem costs 300UAH (and I’m not sure if it comes with two months of uncapped internet access).

You math wizards out there might have already jumped to this paragraph. It makes more sense for me to buy a new modem every two months than it does to keep using the same modem and paying for more data. I don’t come near using more than 5GB of data in a month, but I like to know that I have the option to do so.

Today, I bought my second modem and in two months I will buy another. I just need to start switching stores where I buy it so they don’t get suspicious.

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