In this new era of technology it is very important to be always connected to the internet, either for work purposes, such as responding to your client’s emails immediately directly from your mobile phone or your mobile device, or just for your entertainment.

Some cities of the world have entered the new era, providing citywide Wi-Fi, but there are very few cities that offer this kind of service. For the rest of us (that don’t have free Wi-Fi provided by our cities) there are only two other options: we can either spend our time in a coffee shop like Starbucks do work or browse the Internet or we can purchase one of the internet options that are available with our mobile phone carriers.

I use two of the options my GSM provider has given me: having internet on my phone and having another SIM just to have internet on the go. The internet on my phone (iPhone 4) is limited to 500 MB/month and I have to pay every MB I use beyond that limit. In general I use my entire quota and even exceed it by a bit. Unfortunately for me, being using just my phone when I am out of the office isn’t enough.

Sometimes I have to write long emails or resolve a programming issue on one of my websites, and doing such chores on my iPhone is quite difficult. This is why I bought a mobile broadband dongle that I connect to my laptop. This solution is perfect for me because I can also use the SIM card in a 3G iPad when I need it and also with any mobile device that has an USB port.

I would love to have only one data plan of 2GB/month, which I could spend on my mobile phone and also with the USB dongle. In the setup I have now I have to pay two data plans every month, which can get quite expensive if I exceed my monthly quota.

Nevertheless I am very happy with the way I managed to be always connected to the Internet, a very important detail in every freelancer’s life, if they want to have control 24/7 on every aspect of their business.