I’ve just got back from 2 weeks in Australia visiting family and escaping the dreaded Inversion. I was struck by the ease with which I was able to continue working as a website developer overseas.
This in part came down to Vodafone Roaming, which is really pretty good value these days. For $5/day I got my full allowance of minutes, SMS and most importantly data in Australia, so for 14 days away this cost me $70. By way of comparison, I vividly recall travelling through Italy a few years back and in desperation to find a way out of Rome, turned on Roaming so as to use Google Maps. This ultimately cost me about $240, though I admit that this happened more than once… Regardless – $240 was faaar too much.
Anyway – I just activated the Wi-Fi hotspot on my phone, connected the laptop to it an away I went – far easier that trying to use “free” internet services at the various places we stayed.
LOGIC1 is a Google Apps authorised reseller and as such it’s no surprise that I use Google Apps myself. It’s not that unusual to be able to get to your email from anywhere these days, but the fact that I could also access all of my files stored in Google Drive was awesome.
Finances weren’t affected either, with Internet banking and Xero for Accounts I really did have everything I needed to be able to work remotely. The fact that Vodafone was still providing me unlimited calls meant that I was still contactable and could make calls without worrying about getting a horrendous bill. Here’s hoping I don’t need to edit this post at the end of this month…
If you’re reading this and would like to know more about Google G Suite / Apps or mobile office productivity in general – please get in touch.
