# Temporary secure Wi-Fi access



## Mchambers1

Does anyone have any experience of using Hippocket Wi-Fi as a personal Wi-Fi source when travelling in Europe? (Need to get some sort of temporary secure Wi-Fi to be able to use my banking apps etc. until we can get it set up in the house). Thanks.


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## Peasant

I've used Astrill VPN for years.


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## RayRay

*One caveat:* If you house doesn't have the French equivalent of land line telephone service now, the process of getting wifi could take a couple of months. First, France telecom has to run a wire to your house (perhaps a month or more to get that to happen). Second, an electrician must run a wire from the external point of presence to wherever you're going to put your providers box (at minimum, 2-3 weeks). Third, you have to order the phone provider's box (2 weeks). 

*I just looked at the prices for Hippocket.* For unlimited data, it's 6-9€/day depending on how long you rent. That seems expensive-ish (though maybe that's just the current cost). For that price, you might want to look into alternatives: 

Check with your UK mobile provider. They may offer roaming data access in France for less and your UK phone number would continue to work. 
If your mobile phone is unlocked, buy a rechargeable French SIM chip at any big grocery store. There are a variety of plans available and you can recharge the chip as you use it. When we first arrived, that's what we did. I've not checked prices recently, though. Perhaps someone who's used it recently can update you.
Best of luck.

Ray


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## Poloss

RayRay said:


> *One caveat:* If you house doesn't have the French equivalent of land line telephone service now, the process of getting wifi could take a couple of months.


If you are in a 4G/5G zone you can get internet rapidly for a reasonable tarif without any landline/ADSL/optical fibre connection.
We had this one from Bouygues and were fully satisfied:




__





4G box : offre, installation... Comment ça marche ?


Guide pratique




www.bouyguestelecom.fr





You can also get a routeur nomad 4/5G from Bouygues or Orange - mine cost around 18€/month for 20 giga
some are just limited to France but Orange cover much of EU27 if I remember correctly.
Some examples:








🥇Comparatif Routeur 4G+ 2022 | Les 10 Meilleurs Routeur 4G Portables


lll➤ Consultez notre dossier spécial routeur 4G+ nomades : guide d'achat test et comparatif pour trouver le meilleur routeur 4G grâce à notre séléction.




routeur-5g.fr





My daughter's house has no landline so she had her smartphone simcard cloned to use in a nomad device as a permanent routeur for the house


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## ToulouseRob

I use an old Android 7 smartphone (one that I keep because it seems to have much better GPS performance than my new phone) with a FreeMobile SIM card (Forfait Free sans engagement : Internet 5G illimité). 90 GB per month for €11.99 per month for the first year. Activate it as a mobile wifi hotspot. No need for the phone to be unlocked. Having a separate phone also means I can leave it with my OH if I go into town, so she has the wifi when I'm not there.

Other things:

you can get the cards in the Free shops or at one of their partner shops which have an automated machine;
it works in Europe, and also in the UK but the limit is 10GO in UK;
in theory you can cancel the contract at any time but I haven't done that yet so don't know if it's as easy as it says;
I've connected a laptop and two phones to the hotspot with no slowdown I've noticed;
the phone discharges quickly, so it needs to be recharged often;
the phone gets warm so give it plenty of ventilation.

I'm very pleased with the perfomance.

Edit to add: I also systematically use a VPN (Proton VPN) on all devices, especially for travelling around. If you use a VPN, certain combinations of VPN and mobile hotspot don't work well together. IIRC the phone that serves as the hotspot shouldn't have a VPN installed. Bit of trial and error needed there.


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## jweihl

We've been waiting for a year to get our fibre internet installed (it's honestly two feet from our building, but there have been bureaucratic and technical "adventures" that are frankly Kafka-esque. Luckily we're in a 4G zone, and have been using a "4g Box" since we arrived. Frankly, the 4G box we had from Orange sucked. It lagged and required recharging or reregistering every 30 days ("it's meant to be temporary until your fibre is installed). We quickly changed it out for a 4G box from Bouygues which works really well. It's technically more robust, has a better/more customizable interface (I've even plugged a second router behind it to handle my VPN traffic). It's not fibre, but we can surf, stream, watch TV with good reliability. It requires no contract, is unlimited data, and costs €32.99 per month. It took no more than 30 minutes in the Bouygues boutique to get!

I can't wait for my fibre, but the Bouygues 4G box has been a life saver.


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