Telcel Internet

We just renewed Our Stick Today!Purchased originally last Winter (Jan 13)

We bought the first Month of 3 G For $400 Pesos at the Telcel Office in Guamas on the way down! This Winter Nov 13..... $299 + $100

Today I got Special Promotion deal of 2 Months for the price of 1 Month which cost $500 Pesos..60 Days ! Not exactly 1/2 price but close enough!

Bought it on line!

When you go to buy time you do not have to take the stick in - just tell them to put money toward the phone number of the stick. Caution - it costs a peso to send a text so when you text you lose part of what you bought - why does that matter? - when you buy $400 for the 399 plan you can send the one text message. If you send it before your previous time runs out they won't apply it and you will have wasted a text. The next text costs another pesos so now you have 398 so can't get the 399 plan. Am I making sense? So go to OXXO and say put $400 on your number and then wait until your time runs out before you text for more. I am not sure at the moment but think the 399 plan would be "alto30" no quotes. When you open the Banda Ancha window there are several boxes around the sides. The bottom left says messages. Click that. Opens another window - click new message - SEND To "5050" no quotes - then in the body write alto 30 and nothing else - and send. It will know what to do as long as you have enough in your account to cover what you ask for. Could seem confusing at first but once you do it is easy. Do a sort of dry run to open the message window and see where to write 5050 and where to write alto30 - alto30 should be the plan for 3GB for 30 days. There are other plans and can be specials online - you can also pay online. So far we have only figure out how to go to OXXO and pay the $400 and do as above - works for us.

Internet on Telcel seems to be very iffy and erratic no matter where we are. If you have line of sight you should get a signal. But most of Mexico is still 3G so if there are lot of people on the web and using data on their phones it can be crowded and slow - but better than nothing. We try to us WiFi as much as we can be have Telcel for those times we can't get WiFi. If Telcel was faster we might use it all the time but it seems slow in most places - no faster than WiFi so we save our data for when we need it. You may get faster speed. I doubt you can stream video or send/receive large files like pictures without using up a lot of your data allotment. A couple years ago we were having files backed up on the cloud and didn't think that everything we did would use data so pictures were going to the cloud and our money went away very fast.

Thanks Rob and Brian. I did get some info on the 4G service. Not really much yet. They have coverage in 12 major cities but only on towers with high demand. So the low rent areas get zero! I will probably get good service in Kino during the week. But weekends with kids and smart phones would be bad. I am still keeping my broadband connection. We have used WiFi in many CG's. The ones with Direcway/Hughes are next to useless. Some of the smaller parks are OK. When we had bad wifi I would just take the laptop to an internet café. The Telcel s service should make life easier. It will be interesting to see if my Magic Jack will work. In the mornings when my broadband is better I use the MJ and it is OK. A speed test usually shows around 800. My 3G Sprint phone gets very good 3G in the USA when there is a signal. Same for my Canadian Rogers in Canada. But I have learned there are different "flavors" of 3G and 4G. Some are super quick and others are like a good dialup!

Moisheh

A quick note. OXXO may say they don't have a 400 peso choice. Buy 2- 200 pesos.
I like using mitelcel.com. You can set up a credit card if you want. The cost is better also.
30 días 3 GB alto30 382 peso
30 días 2 GB medio30 324 peso
30 días 1 GB bajo30 286 peso

To setup mitelcel for the first time you enter the phone number and pick new account, they immediately send a message back with password you need to use. Then you enter your name and e-mail information.

But in any case you must pick a contract choice after you put the money at OXXO. Do not confuse them at OXXO, Just say you are adding money to the account(phone number). You are not buying a plan until you send text message.

keelhauler. The prices are the same. The prices you quoted are " mas Iva".

Moisheh

One more question: I want to setup my desktop to use the device. Then at some point I will want to use it in my laptop. Will this be a problem? If you had 2 laptops and no mifi device could you simply move your modem to the second computer?

Moisheh

We use ours on 3 different computers - no problem. I think when you go online only the stick ID is seen no matter what it is connected to.

The one problem we have noted this year with our Telcel stick is that SKYPE no longer works. I have seen some posts that say the Carlos Slim- owner of Telcel has figured out how to block international calls on Skype. Other people tell me Magic jack still works but we have been totally unable to use Skype. Any one else?

We also use a callback service in our stick ( actually block) home and old Slim blocks the numbers. He needs the $$$$.

Moisheh

Skype works with Telcel stick but you can only use it at the time of day to have a fast connection.