MMM – September 2019

178 Need technical advice?[email protected] 2019

How to get internet

in your motorhome

From route planning to listening to UK radio and watching TV, or just staying

in touch with family, a good internet connection is essential to many people

A

good internetconnectio n is a
must for many motorhomers,
especially when travelling in
Europe. From route planning, to
sear ching out great places to eat, or
to simply keep up on UKnews, the
internet is essentialfor many people.
A smartphone may prove sufficient
for some interne t use but, forothers, it
doesn’t providethe level of coverage or
speed required.Invar iably, many of the
places you want tovisit areaway from
densely populated areasand, as such,
the strength andspeeds of cellular
connection s canbe var iable. Couple
that with the ‘Faraday cage’ ef fect of
your ’van andyou may often find that
weak signals candisappear, or your
phone simply gi ves up reconnecting to
conserve its battery.

Getting the ri ght set-up canbe

tricky, so here we will explain the

easiest and most reliable ways of

staying connected while travelling in

your motorhome, without the jargon.

STREAMING TV

Over the last 12 months we haveseen

a huge increa se inpeople looking

to watch TV via the in ternet , dr iven

by the fact that many peoplenow

havesmart TVs at home and wantto

transfer that same viewingexperien ce

to their motorhomes.

Streaming-only se rvices such as

Netflix, Now TV and Prime Video

all providea wealth of contentnot

available via traditional means, not to

mentionthe ability to catch up with

...andhis wife, Sophie,run

Motorhome WiFi supplying

built-in WiFi solutions to 125 UK

dealers and several UK

motorhome manufacturers

your favourite regularTV programmes

at a time convenient t o you via BBC

iPlayer, ITV Player o r similar.

If your motorhome TV isn’t ‘smart’

that do esn’t mean it needs to be

replaced, as many add-ondevices ar e

available toprovidethis function ality

for very little cost. An AmazonFire

TV Stick is the most popular op tion

as it supports most o f the main

services and is very easy to use. Once

purchased for around£40 there areno

additional costs un less you subscr ibe

to a premiumservice. This plugs in to

a spare HDMI socket and takes power

either from the TV’s USB socket or a

nearby USB pl ug.

Satellite syst ems, or a terrestrial

aerial will only gi ve access to live TV,

which means you need aninternet

Adam Blacklin ...

The best of both worlds is touse an iBoost aerial to increase

campsite WiFistrength, together with a4Gbooster box