Cellular Abroad International Hotspot

American gadgets don't travel well overseas. This we know: When we take our phones and hotspots abroad, we're often socked by such astronomical roaming charges that they're really only good for emergency use. Buying local SIM cards is a decent solution if you're traveling to a place where you speak the language, or you're fine with voice and text, but we've had way too much trouble configuring data services in non-English-speaking countries to recommend that path.

So we strongly recommend renting a wireless hotspot or buying a roaming SIM card if you need data on the go. Long-time wireless rental firm Cellular Abroad recently started out renting hotspots to compete with industry leader XCom Global (4 stars), so we took one of Cellular Abroad's hotspots over to the UK for a few days to check it out?with good results, for the most part.

Pricing
For its base price, Cellular Abroad offers unlimited data in Israel and the UK; 10GB in Italy, 2GB in Australia, 1GB in France and China, 250MB in Germany, and "30-60 MB" in 130 other countries. That's more countries than XCom covers, but XCom offers truly unlimited data in its 67 countries.

Hotspot prices vary wildly from country to country. In general, they're more expensive than XCom for trips of less than about two weeks, and less expensive for longer trips. That's because Cellular Abroad's daily fees get lower faster for longer trips. You'll be laying out at least $70 no matter what, though.

It's easy to create scenarios where one service is cheaper than the other. For a three-day trip to London, XCom's hotspot costs only $59.80 while Cellular Abroad's costs $140. But for a 14-day trip, XCom charges $201 while Cellular Abroad charges $168. For a one-week trip to China, XCom charges $119.60 while Cellular Abroad charges $103.?In limited-data countries, you can recharge the hotspot plan. A $59 voucher gets you another 30-60MB in many countries, according to Cellular Abroad; there are also less-expensive vouchers for larger amounts of data in a few places.

But there's a very big catch. In some countries, Cellular Abroad's per-megabyte prices are totally unaffordable. One megabyte of data costs $51.08 in Jordan, $32.46 in Ukraine, and $21.54 in Guatemala. It's not even worth offering a service at those rates.

Another competitor, Maxroam, offers per-megabyte rates that are often lower than Cellular Abroad's. But Maxroam doesn't rent hotspots, so you'd have to buy an unlocked hotspot; the Huawei E585 that Cellular Abroad uses costs $126 at Expansys USA. Whether that still results in savings depends on how many megabytes you use.

Cellular Abroad charges $29.96 for two-day shipping, or $12.88 for ground shipping if you order two weeks in advance. XCom's two-day shipping price is the same, but the other company offers free shipping if you order ten days in advance.

Performance and Conclusions
My hotspot came in a bulky, zippered cloth case. I received a Huawei E585 hotspot with a logo for the "3" wireless carrier on the front, even though it was loaded with a T-Mobile UK SIM card. It came along with a belt clip and UK charger. The hotspot has a sticker on the back showing how to use it, and an OLED display on the front showing connectivity, battery status and data transfer rates. I love the display, which let me parcel out my battery usage throughout the day, something I found harder to do with XCom's displayless Novatel hotspot.

Battery life was pretty standard for a hotspot at something north of four hours of solid use. XCom offers an optional second battery for $2.45/day, though, which I would have liked to see here.

Using the hotspot is pretty simple: turn it on, punch in the password on your laptop or phone, and connect. But I found coverage and speeds around the Excel convention center in East London to be spotty and unreliable. Within the convention center, I often had trouble getting a connection. I didn't have any issues in my hotel room, though, where I got a clear 1-2.5Mbps down on the HSPA 7.2 hotspot. It was enough to do what I needed to get done.

Cellular Abroad's hotspot, like XCom's, works pretty much as advertised out of the box. You need to decide between providers based on pricing and data limits for your destinations. For short trips to one of XCom's 67 countries, XCom's service will give you better value. It's really nice to have unlimited data and not worry about counting your bits and bytes. And if all you're looking for is smartphone data in non-XCom countries, make sure to compare the prices at other roaming SIM companies like Maxroam. Cellular Abroad's service becomes valuable on longer trips to select countries. It's definitely worth looking at.

As you check out roaming data options, it's also worth looking at Boingo Mobile (3.5 stars), a super-cheap ($8/month) global network of Wi-Fi hotspots. Since Wi-Fi isn't as pervasive as 3G, though, make sure to check all your destinations on Boingo's site. I found Boingo's Wi-Fi to be almost everywhere in London, for instance, but almost nowhere in Granada, Spain. In some places, there's just no beating the convenience of 3G.

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