Better internet in your caravan

Good internet connection in your van can sometimes be a challenge, so how can you ensure the best signal at all times? Peter Rosenthal finds out

2024-04-18 -

THE INTERNET is very much a part of our daily routine – from staying in touch with family and friends to checking your bank balance and paying for parking, it’s difficult to imagine life without it.

Even staunchly non-tech caravanners occasionally have to rely on Google Maps to find a campsite, and it’s great to have the option to stream a film on a wet day when the appeal of hillwalking wanes.

Keeping connected

Most people have a smartphone or tablet and these devices are really powerful ways to access the internet, but they do have their limitations. In a smartphone, the battery, screen, processor, SIM and ports all jostle for space around the aerial and as they are very much a jack-of-all-trades, sometimes aerial space is limited and compromised.

You can purchase products that are far more dedicated to providing high-speed internet than a phone, and they can be paired with a variety of aerials to provide excellent access.

When paired with the correct SIM card, they can work well – but it’s vital to be on the most suitable network for your area and wherever you might be visiting.

Getting the internet in your van

The most basic way to get the internet in your caravan is to use your smartphone to access the network via a phone radio mast.

You can then either view content directly on your phone, or use it as a mobile hotspot to send the feed to a laptop, tablet or other compatible device. How well this will work depends on the quality of the signal your phone receives, however.

They typically work well in urban areas, less well in rural settings – there tend to be more phone masts in urban areas than there are in remote regions.

Mobile data use

If you are using your phone remotely from your home Wi-fi network, you will be using mobile data that is being streamed from the nearest phone mast.

The amount of data that you use can vary, depending on what you’re doing. If you’re running Google Maps all day, you’ll typically be using around 40MB of data per hour.

One of the heaviest data uses is to stream a film, which can take up some 2GB of data for a complete film. Just watching TV can consume around 1GB of data per hour. If you only go online occasionally to check your emails or contact friends and family, you will use very little data and don’t need to buy a costly high-use SIM card.

Have a look at the history of your phone (usually in Settings) to see how much data you typically use to gauge which sort of SIM card will be best for your needs.

To give you an idea of the range of SIM card prices, a low-use SIM from Giffgaff is free to order and costs £6 per month for up to 2GB of data, while unlimited data

SIM cards tend to cost about £25 a month.

Some companies have tempting deals to lure you in, but do check the small print

– for example, Lebara offers unlimited data for £9.98, but it’s only for the first three months before it switches to £24.95 a month. However, this is still a good deal, as it includes unlimited roaming in the EU.

If you only want to use the SIM card when you’re away on holiday, you can also buy pay-as-you-go cards loaded with data credit. For example, EE offers one preloaded with 50GB of data credit for just £35.

Campsite Wi-fi

Many sites offer Wi-fi as part of their pitch fee. The Caravan and Motorhome Club has basic Wi-fi at most of its pitches, or faster Wi-fi from £2.15 per day. The Camping and Caravanning Club offers free Wi-fi at most of its campsites.

The concern with all campsite Wi-fi is that everything depends on how far your pitch is from the Wi-fi antenna, what bandwidth they offer and how many users are online simultaneously. If the campsite is full of families and everyone is trying to stream a film at the same time, you are unlikely to get a very slick service!

However, you can improve your internet experience by adding an extra aerial to your caravan and using a dedicated Wi-fi box (also known as a Mifi device). These can work well on a campsite where the pitches are positioned a long way away from the Wi-fi mast (which is often close to the reception building). They can also receive signals from more distant phone masts on campsites that don’t provide Wi-fi.

Which phone network?

The first thing that you need to look at is your mobile network provider, so you can compare its coverage with other providers. You will have to use a separate SIM to run the device, so you’re not limited to your phone network.

There are four main mobile phone networks – EE, O2, Vodafone and Three – and other providers will piggyback off one of these. So before choosing which one to go with, it’s very important to take a look at the coverage map of the ‘big four’ network that your provider is using.

BT Mobile, The Phone Co-op, Plusnet Mobile, Utility Warehouse and Vectone Mobile all use EE. O2 hosts Giffgaff, Virgin Mobile, Tesco Mobile, Sky Mobile and Lycamobile. Three hosts id Mobile, Smarty and Superdrug Mobile, while Vodafone supports Voxi, Asda Mobile, Talkmobile and Lebara. Other brands are popping up all the time, but check which provider they use.

The key thing is to choose a provider that offers you the best coverage for your area and the best Sim-only deal.

If you’re out of contract on your phone (that is, you’ve paid for the handset), you really need to negotiate a Sim-only deal or a reduction in monthly payments. If you’re paying more than £20 a month for a basic SIM card, this is essential.

All this talk about ‘99% network coverage’ can be a bit confusing, as it refers to population centres rather than the physical geographical network coverage.

In theory, the four main mobile providers are committed to providing reliable 4G coverage for 95% of the UK’S landmass by early 2027, but looking at Ofcom’s current map (checker.ofcom.org.uk/en-gb/mobilecoverage), they still have quite a way to go. Coverage in Scotland is patchy, as it is in

‘The CAMC has basic Wi-fi at most pitches. The C&CC offers free Wi-fi at most of its sites’

parts of Wales. It’s a fairly similar story with 5G, as well. Although this speedier network is available in many cities, it can be pretty much hit and miss in rural areas, with Cumberland, Scotland and Wales having the worst coverage.

If you live in these areas, don’t pay extra for a 5G device – there’s no point in doing so yet. In a few years, it might be worth upgrading, but save your cash until then. You can always upgrade later if you have a 5G-compatible phone or Wi-fi device.

Free Wi-fi hotspots

Many UK cafés and takeaways provide free Wi-fi, but check how secure this is and the terms and conditions involved. Some are only free for a limited time, for example.

The service offered varies, too, with many only providing basic services, with limited speed. If lots of users are sharing the access point, the speed can be slow and you might be unable to get online. They’re useful, but can’t always be relied on.

Boosting the signal

There are various methods for boosting your internet speed, and one of the most effective is to establish a virtual Wi-fi spot in your caravan.

One of the challenges in any leisure vehicle is the Faraday cage effect, where the metal in the structure can block the radio signals coming from the phone masts.

The way around this problem is to use a boosting aerial inside your caravan, or better still, fit an external aerial.

External aerials can be fixed permanently on the roof of a caravan, or temporarily to the bodywork with the use of suction cups or a removable bracket.

These aerials can be paired with a mobile hotspot (aka Mifi) device to boost the signal from the nearest phone mast.

The masts broadcast data streams via a radio signal, so booster aerials and Mifi boxes can be an effective way to create a Wi-fi network in your van that can be fed through to all of the family’s gadgets.

A dedicated Mifi device will produce a faster internet connection than using your phone as a hotspot because it is specifically designed to do just the one job well.

In speed tests carried out comparing my own phone with a Mifi box, all of the units that we tested easily outperformed the phone, and by a substantial margin. They will definitely work well.

Motorhome Wifi is one of the leaders in this field – it supplies many van manufacturers direct – and offers a range of dedicated Wi-fi boxes and aerials to suit a variety of motorhomes and caravans.

These include roof-mounted aerials, which are linked to dedicated Mifi boxes that can provide a powerful mobile hotspot inside your caravan.

Its basic 4G systems start from £320 for a smart aerial and a Mifi box that offers you download speeds of up to 600Mbps and up to 32 connected devices.

Motorhome Wifi’s flagship product – the all-singing, all-dancing 5G Now Compact Pro – costs £650 and boasts download speeds of up to 3.8Gbps, a 25-50m Wi-fi

range and up to 32 devices all operating simultaneously. Probably overkill for many caravanners, but it would be ideal for film buffs and keen gamers.

You can also use standalone Motorhome Wifi boxes in your home (when paired with a freestanding or a permanent aerial), and they can be moved between tourers.

A more budget-priced option from Falcon Technology is its 4G Combo, which is an all-in-one aerial and Mifi unit that fits to the side of your caravan (using either suction cups or the supplied mounting bracket) and plugs into a 12V socket or a mains plug. This offers 4G downloads of up to 150Mbps and supports up to 10 devices.

It costs from £219 to £255, depending on the items you want with it. Falcon Technology also offers a range of Wi-fi kit designed to support 4G and 5G applications.

Satellite internet

One of the latest forms of the internet is provided by Starlink, the satellite internet constellation operated by US aerospace company Spacex.

This system dispenses with the ground-based phone mast network, so the advantage (as with satellite TV) is that the signals are not going to be blocked by inconveniently lumpy bits of the local topography, such as mountains or valleys.

Basically, if you can see the sky, you can get a signal (although tall buildings or trees positioned close to your pitch could make finding that signal something of a challenge in the northern hemisphere).

The service that is promised by Starlink is pretty impressive, too, offering typical download speeds said to be between 100 and 230Mbps in the UK.

The downside to this level of service, though, is the cost, and having to use a bulky satellite dish to pick up the signal.

The Starlink Roam system comprises a freestanding satellite dish with a base that links to a supplied router and comes complete with all of the cables that are needed for setting up.

Starlink also produces a roof-mounted satellite dish, which can be permanently attached to your caravan.

These packages cost £449 for all of the kit, plus £85 a month for the unlimited mobile data package (the home package is £10 cheaper per month), so this is not going to be a budget option.

If you want Starlink’s flagship system, its mobile priority packages (which are really aimed at coastal applications) cost £206 to £4038 per month for the 5TB package.

Verdict

There is no single ‘best’ way to set up your connection to the internet in your van, but using the mobile phone network linked to a Mifi box with a booster aerial can be a cost-effective method for improving things pretty significantly.

Just make sure that you check which SIM card network and usage rate is going to work best for you.