How to get good internet in your motorhome

Keith Gooden

In today’s episode of the Motorhome Matt podcast…

Matt Sims

We explain how to get the best internet connection on the road.

Keith Gooden

And we answer your questions about amber flashing emergency lights – also, portable lithium batteries versus a lithium setup. Welcome to the Motorhome Matt podcast. I’m Keith Gooden.

Matt Sims

And I’m Motorhome Matt.

Keith Gooden

Industry insights and expert advice for the world of motorhomes, caravans and campervans, all brought to you by www.thatleisureshop.com.

Matt Sims

Now, please do remember to follow on your favourite podcast app. Or if you’re watching on YouTube, please click subscribe and the little bell – brought to you by our friends at www.arobasecreative.co.uk.

Caravan, Motorhome and Holiday Show Tickets

Keith Gooden

It’s a brand new year, and the show season gets underway. It’s the Caravan, Motorhome and Holiday show in Manchester this week. And you can get your tickets for free with a special code, can’t you, Matt?

Matt Sims

You can. Just use the code, PTMMPOD.

Keith Gooden

Is that it? It’s quite long.

Matt Sims

PT, Motorhome Matt podcast, I’m guessing is what it is. PTMMPOD will get you in to the show for free. So go and pre-register for your tickets for the show. You can find out more at mhmp.info/events. Keith, what’s the code?

Keith Gooden

I’ll tell you what the code is. For free, tickets for free?

Matt Sims

For free.

Keith Gooden

PTMMPOD.

Matt Sims

See you this week in Manchester.

Keith Gooden

Yeah – mhmp.info/events. Get there right now.

Product of the Week

Keith Gooden

It’s our product feature. Brand new product out. It’s a 4G mobile router. We’ve talked about these in the past, haven’t we?

Matt Sims

Here it comes.

Keith Gooden

This is a new one – internet that travels with you at a special price as well.

Matt Sims

Do you know what? We’re really excited about this. We’ve been alluding to the launch of this product for months, and we’ve been testing it for even longer, but it’s here. It’s finally here from Belmont Leisure. It is the Pathway 4G, and it’s sold exclusively through www.thatleisureshop.com, in store and online.

Let’s have a look. So it comes in this really beautiful carry case. And inside is a portable 4G router. You simply put a SIM card into the bottom, connect the aerials onto the top. Let’s take the covers off the threads.

Keith Gooden

Covers on the threads? You do that. I’ll talk about the price. It’s usually £229 and 99 English pence, your recommended retail price. But the first 50 at www.thatleisureshop.com who buy – not just look, buy! – save £50. That means that the first 50 customers get it for £179 and 99 pence. We’ll unpack more about this in our main topic.

How to get good internet in your motorhome

Keith Gooden

What are we talking about this week, Matt?

Matt Sims

We’re trying to explain how to get good, reliable internet when you’re away in your motorhome, campervan or caravan. What do you need to spend and what do you need to know when choosing hardware and SIM cards and so on? That’s the plan.

Keith Gooden

Now, we have talked about this in the past, but technology moves on so fast. Also, the customer does as well. When we started this podcast three years ago – three years ago! – there were a huge amount of people in the past time who, let’s face it, let’s be honest about it, weren’t necessarily tech savvy.

But a lot of that has changed now. There are a lot more younger people in there, and the older people among us, and I count myself as one of them as well, have also increased their knowledge. So there’s a lot to talk about, still a lot of new stuff as well. So first of all, tell us what’s so difficult about getting internet in your motorhome or caravan?

Matt Sims

Well, it’s not difficult, really. There’s a number of considerations – whether you’re connecting via a mobile signal, so 4G or 5G, whether you’re connecting to a Wi Fi network that’s given to you by a campsite, and it depends how you’re going to connect to it as well. So it depends.

That’s led by your budget. So it’s about the hardware. So what I wanted to do is try and unpack some of the terminology and some of the hardware that’s available to us so you can make the right choice based on your budget and what you’re planning to do.

Key terminology

Keith Gooden

All right, let’s talk about some of those words, shall we? Internet – well, most of us know what that is, don’t we? It was designed in the event of a nuclear war. Did you know that? For military use. Yes, it was so different units could communicate with each other if major communication centers had been destroyed in the event of war.

Matt Sims

I thought it was a university thing.

Keith Gooden

No, no. Well, it probably was at university. They’re probably graduates who did it. But no, it was military technology. So internet, it’s a net, you know, which doesn’t have a center, it’s spread around lots of different places, and you connect a bit of the internet, which connects to a bit the internet. It really is a fabulous, fabulous invention. So we know what that is. Wi-Fi. What is it?

Matt Sims

So Wi-Fi gets confused with internet. So this is about your local connectivity. So within a room or within your motorhome, you’re sharing that internet signal across a Wi-Fi platform.

Keith Gooden

So it’s broadcast from a hub.

Matt Sims

Yes, there’s two elements to this. Your piece of hardware needs to connect to the internet, and then it needs to transmit that signal over a Wi-Fi signal to your local other devices.

Keith Gooden

So you’re talking to your hub through the Wi-Fi signal, your hub is talking to the internet. Okay, 4G. What is it?

Matt Sims

So this is a reference to the network speed of the mobile phone network. So our phones connect to the network and send data. So text messages, WhatsApp messages, emails, they’re all data, and they’re packets of data.

And historically, the network has been 2G and then 3G came along. That’s been turned off. We’re now very much all about 4G, and 5G is being alluded to and starting to appear. Well, it’s going to be some years before 5G is really outperforming 4G. I’m told it’s going to be at least 2029 if not 2032 before 2G is more prolific than 4G.

Keith Gooden

I suppose it’s what people use it for. I mean, my 4G phone is fine for me, even if I use it as a hot spot and tether it, turn it into a hot spot. The data transfer is usually enough, but I do find in this country, our 4G speeds using the mobile network tend to be slower than the continent and the United States. America used to be way behind us.

We were digital in the ’90s, and America was still using analog phones, but they’ve caught up and overtaken us. And I find our 4G in the UK is almost like 3G plus one little point above 4G. Do you know what I mean? Whereas if I go to, say, Spain, I find my 4G is rocket fast.

Matt Sims

Oh, that’s interesting. I’ll find out later this year, because we’re planning to go to Europe, so we’ll test it. But what’s interesting is people say, “Oh, well, let’s get 5G.” If there’s no 5G network, you are working on 4G. And to be honest, 99% of the time, 4G, although you say it’s a bit slower here than other parts of the world, is more than adequate for most of us.

We’re just sending emails. We’re sending text messages. We want to do a Zoom call. 4G works perfectly for that. And people say, “Oh no, I need the latest technology.” You probably don’t. Unless you’re a YouTuber or a photographeruploading massive content, 4G will serve you absolutely fine.

Now, there will come a time when it won’t, because the technology, the hardware we’re using, demands more and more of the network, and then we will need 5G. And we’ve seen the same, haven’t we? ZX Spectrums used to be a fantastic computer and would outperform ever the Commodore 64. I think it was Bill Gates who said no one would ever need more than 16 meg of RAM. And look at it now!

Keith Gooden

What’s that?

Matt Sims

Random access memory. Let’s not go into that! Let’s not go into that.

Keith Gooden

RAM, rim and rim.

Matt Sims

We’re not going there. So, yeah, technology evolves. It does. You’re absolutely right, Keith, as you alluded to, it does evolve over time. And at the moment, 4G serves us all perfectly well.

Keith Gooden

With the Gs, I like to think of it as when you’re going up through the gearbox in your car. One, two, three, four, yeah, each one you can cruise better on. That’s how I like to think of Gs. And usually what pushes you on to new technology, going from 3G to 4G, it’s actually not what you use it for.

It might be adequate for what you use it for, but the applications that you’ve got loaded on your phone or computer, they just work, say, on the 4G network. They update them every so often, and then one day, you get this message which says, “Sorry, but your device doesn’t support the new version of the app.” And you think, “But I use this all the time,” and that’s when you’ve got to upgrade your phone.

Matt Sims

Do you know what 4G stands for? Fourth generation.

Keith Gooden

Does it really? So what’s the difference between the network you’ve just described and a mobile network?

Matt Sims

So the mobile network is the kind of flavour of it. There are four in the UK – Vodafone, Three, O2, and EE. And depending on where you are, it will determine which one might be best for your use.

Keith Gooden

People say, “But I don’t use any of them. I use Sky.” But they use one of those companies.

Matt Sims

Exactly. So Tesco, for example, live on the Three network. I think it’s the Three network. There are only four providers in the UK, and all these other brands – you hear brands like giffgaff, SMARTY, they all live on one of those networks.

Keith Gooden

But they buy buckets of bits, don’t they?

Matt Sims

Huge amounts of data. So if you’re buying something that isn’t one of those four, you need to work out who are they on, which network are they on with, and then it’s about choosing the right one for where you’re going.

Keith Gooden

Just get the best deal, pay the least you possibly can for it. So mobile data. Now, I know when I’m using my Wi-Fi, my hub, that I’m not using my mobile phone. In fact, on a lot of occasions if I go somewhere, I will look for a Wi-Fi hub to log on to, to share with, because I don’t want to be using my mobile data. What is mobile data?

Matt Sims

Mobile data is often an amount of data you’re allocated per month. So you’ll buy an amount of data every month, and then it will run out, and you either top up or your phone will stop working. My kids have this issue all the time.

What’s interesting as time is going on, the data allocation from the network providers is increasing. As we use more data, they’re giving us more and more allowance every month. You could get an uncapped plan where you get an unlimited amount of data. But there is something called a Fair Use policy where the mobile providers will cap how much you’re using.

Keith Gooden

I just think it’s funny, they sell you something. They say it’s unlimited. It’s not!

Matt Sims

You know, recently we had IQ Go on here. And just weeks after we released their fantastic news about their product, that you could use all of the data allowance in Europe, the providers that IQ Go buy from capped it, and only 25% can be used in Europe. So yeah, it’s a changing market all the time.

Keith Gooden

And broadband, or, as my dear departed father-in-law used to call it, Blue Band, after the margarine – what’s broadband?

Matt Sims

So that’s the signal that’s provided into your house. So this is usually referred to as your internet connectivity from a property out to the internet.

Keith Gooden

Through your Wi-Fi hub. That was nothing – he used to call Alexa Asda. Couldn’t understand. He was shouting Asda at this box. He used to ask questions like, “Where’s my daughter?”

Matt Sims

Bless him.

Phone tethering

Keith Gooden

Okay, then – let’s talk about phone tethering, when you get your phone when you’re going somewhere. Now, I’ve done this in the past, and it says you can make your phone a hot spot, so you essentially turn that into a router, don’t you? But I do find it does two things. It uses a lot of battery power and it uses your mobile data, most importantly.

Matt Sims

Yeah, the big issue is – I’ve done this. I’ve had the family tether to my phone, and then I’ve walked out of the motorhome and gone off to the toilet block or wherever I’ve gone, and they all lose their internet connection because I’ve disappeared with the phone in my pocket. So that’s a downside of tethering to a mobile phone.

The other issue with a mobile phone is the aerials in it aren’t massive, so their ability to pick up a signal from a transmitter mast a long way away are very limited. And that’s why perhaps having a piece of hardware with much bigger aerials in might be better.

Keith Gooden

It’s like the olden days. You remember like me, when we used to have aerials on top of the telly, and he used to have two prongs, and you could put them at different angles. “Stop there. Stop there!” You never used to be able to get BBC Two when it first came out. You’d be holding it in the corner of the room with one aerial there and the other there, put it down – basically, it’s the same thing with the this Wi-Fi malarkey.

Matt Sims

Exactly. That is it. But it’s not RF. It’s a different signal, obviously.

Keith Gooden

It’s a digital signal. All right, then. So we’ve talked about phone tethering. Now let’s talk about a fixed antenna, or even, let’s go into space – satellites. Explain some of that to me.

Aerials for your motorhome

Matt Sims

I’ve got some products here I’m going to show you. This is very well known. This is a Maxview. There’s also a company called Avtex. This is their 4G aerial.

Keith Gooden

Where do I put that?

Matt Sims

So this sits on the roof normally of your motorhome, campervan, caravan, boat, wherever you’re putting it. These aerials can actually sit on the side.

Keith Gooden

Does that need a hole?

Matt Sims

There is a thread in the bottom. So you have to drill a 25 mil hole in the roof of your £100,000 motorhome. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be going home and getting the Dewalt out and having a go at that. So get one of these professionally fitted.

Now, these cables are not very long, and every time you bend them or kink them, you lose signal. This is a downside with this type of aerial. You get signal loss the longer the cable, which is why they’re very short. And these screw into a router, so the little box we were talking about, which then transmits this signal that this picks up across a Wi-Fi network.

Keith Gooden

So this is the aerial.

Matt Sims

So this is the aerial. It sits permanently on the roof or on the side. They don’t have to be on this flat surface. That’s a myth. They can be on the side of a canal boat, for example, and they have sticky pads on the bottom.

My advice would be, seal it on the roof as well, but get it professionally installed. So that’s one option. And then inside you’ve got a screw in a router inside a cupboard which also needs power.

Keith Gooden

And by the looks of it, buy some extension cables as well.

Matt Sims

Well, then you’d lose loads of signal.

Keith Gooden

You do. The more you extend it, you’re right.

Matt Sims

There is a solution. There is a solution.

Keith Gooden

What is it? What is it? What’s the solution?

Matt Sims

This is another Maxview product. This is a tiny little aerial.

Keith Gooden

I used to wear one of them when I played cricket.

Matt Sims

It’s a little bit smaller than that. And this is a much bigger hole…

Keith Gooden

That’s what they said on the cricket team.

Matt Sims

This is a much bigger hole, but this is ideal for a VW van. You imagine that great big aerial on the roof of a little T6. These are designed for that kind of market. Much longer cables, because these are coaxial cable, and you don’t lose signal if you kink them, but they’re much longer. A much smaller cable. So you were talking about radio frequency, RF, your aerial cable, but you can run that much further.

Keith Gooden

That little black thing, me cricket box. Who makes that?

Matt Sims

This is a about half the size of a cricket ball, if you’re listening. It’s made by Oyster, and it’s designed for the VW market. So it’s a very small aerial that accesses the mobile signal and then shares it down to a router and that then shares it over Wi-Fi.

Keith Gooden

Okay. That’s why I had to give up cricket, you know. I got a cricket ball…

Matt Sims

Is it?! Not because you were rubbish at it?

Keith Gooden

Oh… okay, what’s next?

Matt Sims

Here’s another one from Oyster. Look at this. Here’s my cricket piece. This is about the size of a hard hat. It’s massive. It’s grey. You’re gonna ask me, why is it grey? Because apparently, all European motorhomes… well, I did.

Keith Gooden

Why is it grey? Matt, why is it grey?

Matt Sims

Because apparently, all European motorhomes are grey, and they’re made in Germany. That’s not true, obviously, but they are grey. This one sticks to the roof. It’s huge. This will pick up a signal from, I think, five kilometers away, if not further, and send it via a Wi-Fi signal five kilometers.

So Oyster – famously, their offices have no internet signal, no mobile signal at all. They plug one of these into a motorhome at the office, walked down the to the pub, which was miles away, and were sat in the pub, streaming YouTube from this miles away. And everyone else in the pub couldn’t believe it. “How are you getting online?” From their aerial at their factory.

So this is a huge aerial, very, very powerful – top end of the market. So you’re looking at kind of £700, £800. It comes with a very long cable, which is actually a cat five cable. So it’s an Ethernet cable like the one you plug in the back of your computer.

Keith Gooden

Cat five is another wire. It can be fast. You plug that in instead of using the Wi-Fi through the air, and it’s faster.

Matt Sims

And this cable runs through a gland. So again, with this, you need to stick it to the roof and then drill a hole in your roof, run this down. It can be very long as a result. That’s a great benefit of using a network cable from the aerial to your router.

Satellites for getting good internet on the road

Keith Gooden

Fantastic. And satellite, talk to me about satellites Elon Musk’s behind it, isn’t he, the old troublemaker?

Matt Sims

He’s been in the news a lot recently, hasn’t he? So Starlink is certainly a fantastic solution to getting internet on the road, but it is quite expensive. We’ve got one here in the office. Our options for connecting to the internet are very limited here, and we discovered that Starlink was the best solution. It is a few hundred pounds to buy the hardware, and then you’ve got £75 a month, or even £85 a month network charge every month. It’s a lot of money.

Keith Gooden

It is a lot.

Matt Sims

And they now do a mobile roaming one as well. So you pay £10 more. I think that’s the £85 a month one. Now, the new Starlink Mini is the size of an A4 sheet of paper. You can pop it on the roof of the van. Pay the £85, because they know you’re moving, you see.

So they know you’ve moved from different locations around the planet. So you pay the extra money and you can keep connected. But the beauty of it, you can turn it off. You just say, I don’t want it this month. Turn it off and then turn it back on.

Keith Gooden

He’s got this web of satellites, which he has been launching for the last 10 years or so.

Matt Sims

He’s launched thousands of satellites up around the sky, the perimeter of the earth, and it’s transmitting a broadband signal to this entire middle band of planet Earth. And the idea, his vision, is that everybody, wherever you are, can get internet access.

Keith Gooden

The idea originally was that it could serve Africa, a huge continent, with the internet, but it seems to have gone further than that. Now, we’ve gone through all the nomenclature. And we’ve talked about the price of some of them, haven’t we? Let’s talk about some of the cons before we talk about the prices. So they can be expensive.

We talked about the satellite – that’s very pricey. We’ve talked about the Oyster. That was, what, £700 or £800, did you say? Let’s talk about the cost of the other ones. Is it cheap and cheerful compared to those expensive ones?

Matt Sims

So you’re probably going to spend £300, £400 on the hardware, typically for a 4G solution, and then you’ve got to pay to get it installed and fixed to the van. The downside of fitting hardware to a van is when you sell it, you’re probably going to have to leave it on the van and have to buy it again.

So that’s the big downside. So if you’re thinking, “I’m only going to keep this motorhome for a year,” it might be worth considering something else, because you’re going to have to invest in the internet aerial again.

Keith Gooden

How much for your little black ball there?

Matt Sims

It’s hundreds of pounds. So it’s actually a brand new product. So I haven’t actually seen the retail price yet. I’m going to guess it’s going to be £300 – £500, somewhere around there.

Portable WiFi Routers

Keith Gooden

Now, let’s talk about portable routers, which is why we came here today in the first place. Now, I understand some of the pros for them. They’re cheaper, they can be moved. You don’t have to put a hole in your motorhome or caravan. Am I right?

Matt Sims

So I’m going to get the Pathway 4G back out. So this has – we called it the lick and stick. The great thing with this is the suction cups are in this box. This is a brand new one. So it comes with two suction cups. They’re just down in here. We’ll get them out.

Keith Gooden

Lickety stickery on the old windowy.

Matt Sims

It comes with cable ties as well. So you can cable tie this to a post if you wanted to. And they’re reusable cable ties. So most cable ties are used once and you throw them away. These you can reuse, but they come with little suction cups. They just pop in the back, lick them and stick them. You can then mount it on a window.

We traveled all around the Outer Hebrides with one of these in the roof light of our van. It was there for two weeks. We just left it plugged in, and it just worked the entire time. There’s only one location that we couldn’t get an EE signal, and that was in the corner of Skye. But the rest of time it worked flawlessly.

Keith Gooden

Okay then, so the benefit is you don’t have to put a hole in your motorhome.

Matt Sims

No drilling.

Keith Gooden

You can take it away with you. So when you sell up, then you can keep it. You can use it in the home if you really want to or anywhere else, should you want to, and it’s got the aerial array at the top so you can get the best signal by giving them a fiddle… said the actress to the bishop.

Matt Sims

You don’t need to do that.

Keith Gooden

So those are the pros. Okay. You put a SIM card in it, don’t you, like you do in your phone.

Matt Sims

So in the bottom here, there’s a slot for a SIM card.

Keith Gooden

So that takes a SIM card, doesn’t it? Could I use the one from my phone?

Matt Sims

You could do, but then that would render your phone useless. So you would buy a data SIM card to go in this.

Keith Gooden

I’m with you.

Matt Sims

And depending on where you’re going, would determine which flavour of SIM you buy. So for example, I mentioned the Outer Hebrides. EE is prolific on the Outer Hebrides. If I’m going into the center of Bristol, then Vodafone is prolific there as well.

So depending on where you’re going, would determine which flavour of SIM card you purchase. And www.signalchecker.com is a great website for finding signal strength in different parts of the country.

And there’s also the facility to do that on the Ofcom website as well. And I did that before I went to the Outer Hebrides. We put our EE SIM into this, and it worked, as I say, throughout the entire trip, apart from one corner of Skye.

Keith Gooden

So what this won’t do is it won’t make a weak mobile signal that is being given to you by a provider any stronger, but it will pull in what signal it possibly can.

Matt Sims

Absolutely right, yes. And because of the size of the aerials, it will pull a signal in from further away than perhaps your phone could.

Keith Gooden

You don’t realise about your phone. If you look around the edge of particularly a certain make of phone, there’s a metal strip. That is the aerial, would you believe? And every time you touch it and hold it, you’re sort of making it shorter or longer, or whatever. So these type of aerials on the top do make life a lot easier.

Even if you buy a Hi Fi amplifier now, you get these on the back so you can connect to your internet at home. Okay, then, so no drilling on the roof. You could take it with you. Is it cheap? Well, it is cheaper. This one at www.thatleisureshop.com for the first 50 customers is £179.99, isn’t it? Recommended retail, £229.99. So it’s considerably cheaper than everything you’ve shown us so far.

Matt Sims

It is, and for many people starting out trying to get internet on the road, it’s really confusing, and I’m sure, hopefully we’ve helped a little bit. But if you’re thinking, “I just want a solution so I can take something on my holiday,” buy a SIM card that’s going to last a month and maybe have 20 gigabytes of data on it, and get one of these.

No drilling, stick it in the van, and when you’ve used it, you can take it away, use it home, or use it on your next trip. And it might be this is a great way of just testing the water. You know, how much internet do we need to use whilst we’re away in the van?

Keith Gooden

Yeah, I suppose, you know, if you’re just going out for a car drive with the kids, you can take that with you as well, and they can play with that.

Matt Sims

We have done that. We’ve stuck one in the back of the VW van. So ours has got loads of seats in it. It’s a shuttle with all the kids in. And I’ve had one of these stuck in the van, connected to the accessory socket in the boot, and just had it on. And they all tether to this, and they all get brilliant internet while we’re traveling.

Keith Gooden

We, you, have recommended and looked at products similar to this in the past. So why are you getting behind this one?

Matt Sims

I think this is a brilliant solution to a very real problem. And so we decided to make our own and bring our own into the UK, and at That Leisure Shop, we have an exclusive with this product. It also means we can offer fantastic after sales support.

So if you’re struggling to set it up, or you want some advice on what SIM you should buy, we’ve got first hand experience of using this, and I’ve used it all over the country. I’ve not yet tried to use one on the continent, but I will be. So the team here can give you proper advice and proper support if you’re stuck. But they are so easy to use.

And one of the great things we did as well, and this took hours and hours of time, is consulted and designed. Look at this beautiful instruction book. It’s in its own pamphlet. You can flick through that and read that, but it’s in a font size you can read! That’s really, really important. Interested? And it is such a simple…

Keith Gooden

I’m reading.

Matt Sims

You might be a while! But it’s really easy to understand the instructions. And if you’re stuck, you can just go on the website. There’s loads of tutorials on there. You’re done with that, are you? But it’s a really, really helpful user manual. Or just give the team a ring and we’ll talk you through it.

Choosing the right SIM card

Keith Gooden

Customer service is a big thing on this particular product. Okay, then. So we’ve talked about just about everything, haven’t we? The main question to ask yourself – what do you plan to use the internet for? Email, social media, Zoom calls, uploading video. The more you intend to use it for, the more complicated the tasks, the more data you’re going to use. What do you plan to do with it as well?

Matt Sims

Yeah, exactly. So that’s the first question, and this will help you determine what size SIM card to buy. So how much data are you going to use? If you’re just zombie scrolling on Facebook, you might only use 100 megabytes a day. And SIM cards are sold in gigabytes.

Keith Gooden

What’s the difference?

Matt Sims

It’s the size of data. So the packet of how much data you’re going to be using.

Keith Gooden

But is a gigabyte 1,000 megabytes? I think so.

Matt Sims

It is, yeah, yeah. I think it is, yeah. So you need to understand how much data you use. That’s the first question anyone that sells SIM cards is going to ask you. It’s a useless question, because do you know how much data you use every day?

Keith Gooden

No. Haven’t the first idea.

Matt Sims

My 16 year old would tell you exactly how much data he uses every day. So this is a journey you need to go on. One of the great things with the Pathway 4G is when you log into it, you can actually see how much data you’re consuming. So you can go on that little learning curve and learn your data consumption.

So you can choose an appropriate SIM card with the right amount of data on it. I had no idea how much data we were going to use at all the shows. So I bought a SIM card from EE that is now £60 for a year. It has 120 gigabytes of data on, so that would give us 10 gig a month. And they’ve lasted for a year, no problem at all.

But we’re using them for our tills, for our credit card machines, and the team are connecting to it with their mobile phones as well. So you need to understand how much data you’re going to consume. So what you’re doing with it is really important, and that is a learning curve that only you can go on. And everyone’s going to have a unique user case themselves.

Keith Gooden

Yeah, because a lot of people will be streaming TV, won’t they?

Matt Sims

If you’re streaming TV, you’re going to use a lot more data than someone who’s just sending a few WhatsApp messages and emails.

Keith Gooden

Because, I mean, if you’re in your motorhome or caravan and you don’t want an aerial on the top, this is the perfect way to get your TV entertainment, isn’t it? So you do need to be aware to buy something with enough ‘biggages’ on it so you can watch your TV and stuff like that.

Matt Sims

And until you know how much data you use, you can’t really make an informed choice about a SIM card. So buy a simple one that is either 20 gig and it lasts for a month, and then you have to top it up. Or if you think, “Well, I’m going to go for a little while,” as I did, £60 and you can buy one that’s 120 gig and it lasts for 12 months.

Keith Gooden

Well, there you go. And if you’re in doubt and you need some more advice, remember the customer service at www.thatleisureshop.com is primo, first class, number one, and they are waiting for your call. I’ll just reiterate it on that product there. It’s £50 off for the first 50 customers at www.thatleisureshop.com, £179.99 instead of £229.99, but only for the first 50 buyers.

Matt Sims

Get in quick.

Keith Gooden

Yeah, get in quick!

Audience Q&A

Keith Gooden

It’s the Motorhome Matt podcast. I’m Keith Gooden.

Matt Sims

And I’m Motorhome Matt.

Keith Gooden

And it’s brought to you with www.thatleisureshop.com. I tell you what – it’s time for our Q & A, questions and answers, where you ask the questions, and he, Motorhome Matt, will give you the expert answer! And if he doesn’t know, he will ask somebody else. Shaun Smith, first of all…

Shaun Smith

What is the best Wi-Fi for motorhomes?

Keith Gooden

Shaun Smith, that is short, and it is very Smithy sweet. What is the best Wi-Fi for motor homes? I suppose it’s like saying, what is the best bucket for carrying water in or what is the best paint to put on your walls? There’s a myriad of answers, isn’t there?

Matt Sims

As we have expanded on today. So Shaun, really it’s about your use case, where you’re going to do it, and how often you’re going to do it. I think if you can answer those three questions, you can start to determine which hardware to use, which will get you on the internet, and then how you’re going to use Wi-Fi and how you’re going to distribute it around your vehicle. So hopefully you found the episode helpful, and it will help you choose what is the best Wi-Fi for you.

Keith Gooden

Yeah, and if you don’t know and you want some more answers, why not drop an email or call up That Leisure Shop, and the experts there will be able to help you out as well, Shaun. Thanks very much for the question. Short, sweet, and to the point. Graham Pickard is in Cuevas Del Almanzora in Spain.

Matt Sims

Well pronounced.

Keith Gooden

Is that eggs of Almanzora? No, that’s huevos, isn’t it? I wonder what Cuevas is. “I’ve just been watching your Christmas podcast, and in particular the question about the flashing amber light. Just to let you know that here in Spain, you can download an app called Alert Cops, so if you have a traffic incident or breakdown, you can use the app to alert the police of your position.”

“Obviously, you still have to use your triangle,” the thing in the back of that car or the motorhome, “Or basic amber light until help comes along. Luckily, not had to use it yet, and hope I never have to. Happy Christmas and New Year to you both. Cheers,” says Graham. We’re talking there about the emergency light.

We have talked about in the past, but if you’re new to the podcast, it’s a new law in Spain, and it’s a very flashy light, isn’t it?It avoids you having to walk down the road with your warning triangle to place it, which is a dangerous thing to do anyway. But it’s becoming law in Spain that you’re going to have to use these flashing amber lights. And also we discussed it in a recent podcast – it can alert the police via a SIM as well, can’t it?

Matt Sims

Yes. So they’re called a V16 beacon. They flash a particular orange at a particular speed, and they can be seen from a kilometer away. Those are what make it a V16 beacon. And we sell them in That Leisure Shop.

We bring them in from Spain, because I think everybody should have one. They’re far more effective than a red warning triangle, particularly as I alluded to before on smart motorways, where in lane one you won’t necessarily get detected if you stop.

But yeah, in Spain, they’re introducing this rule in 2026 that the red triangle won’t be accepted. You will have to have a V16 beacon. And the new ruling is that you have to have to have a V16 beacon in Spain with a SIM card in it that tells people where you are. So when you trigger it, that sends a network. But what Graham has kindly told us is that there’s this app called Alert Cops that would do the same.

Keith Gooden

Brilliant. Fantastic. Paul Drake’s in Wetherby. “Happy New Year to you and the family and colleagues on the show. We really love it,” says Paul. “A question on a podcast in 2023 quoting a lithium ion conversion price of £6,000 plus. When you buy a portable power station, such as an Ecoflow Delta 2, which is £1,300, you can power everything on your motorhome through this and charge it through either solar panels or your alternator while driving.”

He goes on to say that these items are an extra cost. “Why would you then spend over six grand converting your motorhome when you can buy all this portable gear for half that cost for going off grid? Am I missing something here?” He says. He welcomes your comments. “Have a great day. Keep up the great work.” Well, Paul, you make a good point.

Matt Sims

He does make a very good point.

Keith Gooden

My son’s car lost its battery in the cold weather this winter, and before I could take it to the garage, the garage loaned me a big power pack to get the car started again. Why can’t you use something like that?

Matt Sims

Well, you can, and I do. So I opted not to spend six grand on a full lithium install with solar panel, shunt, PPT controller, B to B, all of that stuff that comes as you’ve seen on previous episodes, Paul. And you can actually spend a lot more than that, if you wanted to. We have got a portable power station, like the Ecoflow one you refer to.

And we do charge our phone, my MacBook, we run the coffee machine on it, and it is a much cheaper solution. The downside, and this is the big word of warning – if you plan to hook the motorhome up to a portable power station, it is not earthed, so the motorhome is earthed back to itself, the portable power station is not earthed.

Keith Gooden

Why does it matter if it’s not earthed?

Matt Sims

So if there’s an earth leakage problem, so your kettle shorts out, the portable power pack may not trip off.

Keith Gooden

So if the kettle fails, the element, the heating element, and the positive and the negative wires touch electrically or physically, that will cause a short circuit.

Matt Sims

So if there’s a short to earth, there is no earth, so the portable power pack has rubber feet, so it’s isolated.

Keith Gooden

So just to explain, if there’s no short to earth, then the kettle becomes live.

Matt Sims

The kettle becomes live and it won’t cause a trip out. So on your motorhome, if the kettle shorted out and you’re connected to a campsite, the motorhome is going to trip out, the RCD is going to go, or the one on the campsite will go because it detects this leakage problem. A portable power pack won’t necessarily do that.

Some of them have a digital cutout and they detect a live and neutral short or a short to Earth, but not all of them do. So it’s definitely worth checking that. I would not recommend running a cable from the portable power pack out the window and hooking up the van and making the ring main in the van come to life. I would not be doing that. Plugging your phone and iPad into the portable power pack is fine, but using it to hook the van up – I wouldn’t do that.

Keith Gooden

Right. There you go. And just because I’ve used power packs for other things in the past, you get what you pay for with power packs.

Matt Sims

You absolutely do. I mean, ours is a Bluetti one, and it’s very heavy and it’s brilliant. We use it at the shows. It gives us power for our iPads and so on, and they’re fantastic. And it is a much cheaper solution than having a full lithium install. A full lithium install is about convenience as well.

So you haven’t got to lumber this great lump around and secure it when you’re traveling. Lithium batteries are installed. They’re always there. They’re always charging. There’s nothing really to think about. But with a portable power pack… it’s what works for you.

Ask Matt

Keith Gooden

So Matt, how do people get in touch?

Matt Sims

We would love it if you did. If you’ve got a question, we always say, please ask it, because it guarantees hundreds of people thinking the same. Go to mhmp.info/askmatt, click the little orange button and record it. Please tell us where in the country you are if you do that. Or fill in the form and Keith and I will read it out for you.

Keith Gooden

Or indeed in another country! We’re very popular in all sorts of places, Ireland, Israel, Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands… China.

Matt Sims

China! We were chopping the charts in China.

Keith Gooden

Chopping the charts. We chertainly are. If you’re looking for trusted brands and services, then make sure you visit the Motorhome Matt Approved directory. It’s at mhmp.info/approved.

Matt Sims

And if you’re watching on YouTube, please make sure you hit subscribe and the little bell. And our YouTube channel is sponsored by www.arobasecreative.co.uk.