Many of you will be visiting Amsterdam for IBC 2011 and your thoughts may be turning to how to get online when you are there. You can, of course, make use of roaming data… if your company is rich enough, or you can make use of your hotel WiFi or hope to find free/paid options around town. You can easily blow through hundreds to thousands of Euros this way.
If your hotel is 4* or above then you will almost certainly be paying anything between €5 for 2 hours through to €25 per day. If you are in the lower 2 or 3* hotels then you will be lucky… these tend to have free wifi, although the quality tends to be poor and you will need to practice all your skills of guerrilla networking to get something that works unless you are very lucky. However there is a better option – make use of local 3G pre-pay Broadband which can be much cheaper if you are in Amsterdam for longer than a night. The challenge though is that you have no idea how it works in the Netherlands, and you do not speak Dutch. Here is where this article helps.
Prepaid SIMs can be purchased from many places, principally from the many mobile phone stores (BelCompany has served me well) or from supermarkets such as the ubiquitous Albert Heijn. However you need to select your operator with care as costs and coverage vary wildly. There are a number of options (the Netherlands has quite a number of operators) but the best selection (i.e. best value) comes down to a straight choice between Vodafone Netherlands (vodafone.nl) and T-Mobile Netherlands (t-mobile.nl). Regardless of which you select, you do need an unlocked phone handset (either the device you will be using or another) to add credit to the account so ensure you have one with you to do this or you need to ask the phone shop owner to ensure that credit is directly placed on the account before you leave. For reasons peculiar to the Netherlands, you cannot add credit online directly with a provider without a Dutch bank account, so the normal way of doing it is purchasing Beltegoed (Phone Credit) codes from shops/supermarkets. One day I hope they will allow the use of credit cards like UK operators do.
Which operator you select depends upon how much data you will use (both offer up to 3.6Mbps speeds).
Vodafone is best for Smartphone and/or low PC usage, and offers a basic SIM with the addition of a number of Internet packages called Blox.
Configuration APN: live.vodafone.nl or live.vodafone.com, username: vodafone, password: vodafone
Internet Basis Blox (Month validity/250MB) for €9.50 (sometimes discounted to €4.25) – activated by sending ‘internet basis aan’ to 4000 or by navigating the menus accessible from 1200 (Language selection takes place on first access or by choosing option 5, option 4 and then option 4 again). You can also register on the vodafone.nl (no NL address needed) and navigate the Dutch site to turn it ‘Aan’.
Smartphone Blox (Month validity/1GB) for €14.50 (sometimes discounted to €7.25) – activated by sending ‘smartphone blox aan’ to 4000 or by navigating the menus accessible from 1200 as for Internet Basis Blox.
These do work for PC usage (via WiFi or USB Tethering) but the limits are actively controlled. You will receive an SMS informing you when you at 80% and 100% of your limit and you WILL be cut off when you exceed it. Note though that you can just activate another Blox when you exceed the data use limit and carry on to the new limit. You can alternatively actually purchase the PC Internet Data only SIM, which will also allow VoIP and IM but the price rates are higher. More English based information is available here and here.
T-Mobile is best for higher data PC usage and is the easiest to use (as long as you get around putting credit on the SIM) as it only requires you to put credit on the phone account and then use it.
Configuration APN: internet, no username or password
T-Mobile uses the principle of charging per MB up to a maximum charge per day, with the max charge and rate differing depending on the type of SIM you have. If you have a standard phone SIM (speed is limited to 384kbps) then the cost is €1 per MB to a maximum of €2.50 per day but this is not a recommended option due to the low speed. If you have a Data only SIM then the cost is €0.30 per MB up to a maximum cost of €4.50 per day. The voice system for adding credit is accessible by dialling 1244. T-Mobile does offer English based support for free by calling 1200 (confusingly the same number as Vodafone uses for their voice system) using the SIM and may actually allow you to redeem your credit to the SIM or pay for credit directly, however I do not have direct experience of this. Opwaarderen.nl is not an option unless you have a special International Prepaid SIM. More information on the numbers to dial is available here.
As mentioned, the hard bit is putting the credit onto the phone. The best option is to ensure that you don’t leave the shop without the credit you need already setup on your device. Alternatively you can live on the wild side and buy Beltegoed (credit) in the shop or the supermarket, or by making use of Opwaarderen.nl which allows the purchase of Beltegoed (credit) via Paypal or Credit Card for a fee, and then do it yourself later. This will take the form of a voucher/receipt with the credit code on it, and you then should follow the instructions on the voucher (dialling the number or sending an SMS with certain details) or by navigating the voice based menu for the operator to put the credit on the SIM. This is easier with Vodafone than with T-Mobile, but I have managed to do it. You can always find an obliging interpreter somewhere at the RAI.
All of the above has pre-supposed that you have an unlocked handset and/or 3G device/MiFi. If you do not have one then unfortunately the costs will go up a little, but they can still be in the realms of what it costs for three days of WiFi in a 4* hotel. Vodafone has prepay Android 2.2 phones (which can tether) from €130 and pre-pay USB dongles for €25 to €60 including some credit. T-Mobile similarly has a pre-pay USB dongle for €49.95.
I hope that you find this information useful in your time at IBC2011, and you do manage to get that ‘fully connected’ experience. I hopefully will as well – the info here comes from online sources and my own experience of travelling to the Netherlands as recently as May 2011. Updates will be made during IBC and comments about your own experience are welcome here also. One warning though, unfortunately both operators disable the SIM cards when unused for 6 months so you will have to go through all of this again next year when you go to IBC2012 
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. I do not mind having to think about sudden movements with it in my hand.