Staying Connected

This last week has been a lot of researching and making lists of all the things we need to order and complete before the beginning of our trip. Over the following weeks many packages will be showing up at our door with all of the equipment and RV accessories that we’ll need out there on the road. A big focus has been trying to figure out the costs and logistics of having a solid internet connection out on the road. Living in a residential home it’s easy to take for granted calling up your local internet provider, paying ninety nine dollars a month and having high speed internet. Out on the road staying connected with fast and reliable internet is an involved process.

We decided quickly that we needed some sort of advanced cellular connection as the speeds and latency for satellite internet was not going to work. Next the research began on finding all of the physical equipment that we were going to need and what equipment was right for our circumstances. This lead down a rabbit hole of learning about all sorts of technologies on which the cellular network is built upon. There is fairly inexpensive mobile hotspot device that one can purchase from cellular companies that can be had for only a few hundred all the way to high end enterprise equipment that costs upwards of seven thousand dollars. We settled with the BR1 Pro 5G from Pepwave that struck a balance between connectivity and price only costing CAD $2400.

Next it was time to find the cellular data plan that we’ll be using. This is another involved process that is consistently changing. There are hundreds of different cellular plans to choose from and it takes a lot of sifting through the fine print in order to find the right one. Furthermore it’s not uncommon for the data plans that RVers use to be discontinued meaning having to start from square one.

All in all, it looks like the cost of staying connected on the road with our internet and cell phones is going to be upwards of $500 per month but it’s a cost that we have to pay in order to make this trip work.