Tep Wireless Opiniões 

Staying online while being on the road

In march 2018 we will (hopefully) be setting our footprints on the Southargentinian soil. Right now we're in El Salvador making our way south.

On our roadtrip through Mexico and Centralamerica (sofar), we've been taking our time to test out the mobile hotspot, by the company Tep Wireless. here's our verdict and explanation on why a Teppy will save you money spent at McDonald's and why it's absolutely perfect for your next roadtrip!

Thought on how to stay online
I've always wondered how travelers run their blogs while being on the road. I've been on a fair amount of road trips where 'finding the next McDonalds free wi-fi' has been a daily turning point. I couldn't imagine that's how everybody does, so I started to look into what options I had for staying online while being on the road. Here's what I found.

1. There's satelite communicators that allows you stay online almost where ever you are as long as you can see the sky
2. Then there's roaming on your cellphone with your regular plan from back home
3. Buying a phoneplan in the country/region you're in
4. Finding wifi

The fifth option was the one that I found smartest. A tiny electrical gadget that uses the 3g/4g network to make a wi-fi access point for you. There's a lot of different companies that provides this service. I stumbled upon the company, Tep Wireless, and their device, a "teppy", which I will be reviewing in this post.

Getting the right Teppy
In order to run a blog, and stay online in general, Tep Wireless, kindly sent us a 4g modem. At first we were really disappointed, because it did not work! We turned it on, and it told us: "no service available". Then we wrote an email to Tep, and they were really helpfull with switching the 4g- to a 3g modem which would work in Mexico, Central- and South America.
Tep connects worldwide, so it doesn't matter if you're going to Africa, Asia, Southamerica or Europe. Tep has the device that will connect you on your travels, allthough you will have to get a Teppy for each continent. This is where it comes in handy, that you don't have to buy a Teppy when you're traveling. In stead you can just rent it. Now that's pretty convenient!

How does the Teppy work?
Once we got the right modem in our hands we were really excited to turn it on and get started on the big setup proces. So I did the following:
1. I pressed the start button and the network appeared on my smartphone
2. I typed in the Wi-Fi password and I was online.
3. Start browsing...
When you buy/rent your Teppy, you can buy a certain number of 'days online'. Basically that means, that whenever you like it, you turn on your Teppy, navigate the menu and press "start". Once you have pressed 'start' you have internet access for 24 hours (given you are a place with 3g/4g coverage)
Cudos to Tep for accessibility. Not to hate on monkeys, but a blind one could use this device without messing it up.

Plans offered by Tep
Whenever I travel, and I turn on my mobile data, I close a lot of apps on my phone because I know they use a lot of data. Even though I do that, I'm always a bit nervous when I turn roaming on, because of the roaming prices. This is where Tep's unlimited data plan comes in handy. To me it's worth every penny. Not having to worry about every little kilobyte is freedom reincarnated. for 8$ you can use as much data as you like in the next 24 hours.

Coverage
Here's an unfortunate experience with our Tep, that despite all ended up good. In San Cristobal, Mexico,our Teppy told us we had 3G. Then we started our 24 hours and it went to H++, and after that we had no connection. That sucked as we wasted a full day of internet (8$) on it. I was bummed over the episode and wrote an email to Tep explaining it. They replied with a guide on how to fully reset the Teppy, and informed that they would credit me with a day of internet as compensation.
The Tep works really well on the move! Of course, in the deep valleys of the Mexican mountains, it has its challenges of getting signal, but almost everywhere else we've had great success. Once you start the Tep there's really no way back, and you have to settle with however good connection is available. So in order to have an as good chance as possible for great connection - stay on the move. This is why we find the Teppy perfect for our roadtrip.
I'm not going on a roadtrip again without it. Yes 8$ is a lot of money if you use it every day for six months. But in our case, it's more than enough to turn it on every third day. It's not for free to use the Teppy, but the money we have saved on cheeseburgers and McFlurry's has paid off at least a couple of days worth of use of the Teppy.

Support
There's nothing bad to say about the Tep support. They are available on email, phone, SMS, live chat (on their website), Facebook and their own app (android and iOS). And their response time is just ridiculous. Again, cudos to Tep Wireless for taking support serious.

TEP is a fantastic product, and service, and I've used it in about 20 countries in 2017 so far.

As someone who works and travels nonstop (35+ countries per year) -- it is essential that I always travel with TEP to save me time, money and stress on the road. I never have to worry about not getting internet access anymore!!

I am using my TEP right now to write this review in Argentina, and it's working great. I've never had any issues using it all over the world. Highly recommended!!

Works well until you hit 1GB of usage, at which point it slows down to 256kbps (which means it takes anywhere from 2-5 minutes to load a webpage). I.e. not really "unlimited" coverage as it pretty much becomes useless after 1GB. 7 EUR per day seems like a lot of money for such limited service.

I was planning to use the device to work remotely during traveling through europe but will go ahead and return it instead.

This company failed TWICE on me. First trip was to South Africa where I have strictly instructed them (via web chat) I was leaving in particular date and they had ensure me the device would be delivered to my office on time. It failed to delivered and I was trying to get a device at the airport. I called Excess Baggage co' in advance (18hrs + notice) and someone had took my device. So I didn't get my device on that trip.

The device arrived later on waiting for me in my office after my trip and I decided to retain it for my next trip to NYC for April. Upon arrival at JFK at mid night, switched the device on, it didn't work. Got to the hotel and spend 2 hours on email trying to trouble shoot the device with the useless IT team (went to bed at 4AM). The device was working the next morning for 6 hours before it got cut off. Email back and fought managed to get it fixed after 4 hours (by that time it was like 9PM in the evening). The next day the device actually work the whole day. and days after it stopped working or it took them about 4-6 hours to fix. I have an email thread which was over 100 + emails!

In both cases the company is kindly enough to refund me, but the second incidence I am still waiting for refund (I have chased 3 times) and it's been 3 months.

I would love to give this company zero stars. but I can't here. Avoid if you can and just go roaming. I personally spend more than a day communicating with them.

With this lack of service, i think this company will go out of business very soon.

p.s when i returned the device at Paddington London. The guy at excess baggage told me all customers were complaining the device didn't work. this shows is not a company you can rely or worth wasting your time on.

Travelled for a week in New York City with a TEP mobile wifi and I couldn't quite believe how poor it was. The coverage was inconsistent and weak at best, and it rarely worked when we needed it to. I travelled for three weeks in Japan with a mobile wifi hotspot from eConnect which was half the size and an older model, but it worked flawlessly and the connection was superb, so I struggled to understand why TEP's larger, newer model worked so badly. Wish i'd listened to the poor reviews all over the internet, but this was nowhere near worth the £60 I lost in getting it. Avoid at all costs.

I took TEP with me for 10 days to Spain and was extremely surprise with how good the connection was at all times. It's perfect for my work trips, the fact that you can connect up to 5 devices is perfect for group trips and obviously sharing the expenses make it more affordable!

I only can give one piece of advice, that's to improve its battery life. It isn't THAT bad, but it could be better.

Worth its weight in gold. Tech support when needed was great. Fantastic alternative to getting a GDM / Unlocked phone. It was there when needed. Just pay attention to turning it off when not needed and it will last a couple of days... easy.

Third year of using TEP - first two years were absolutely great - fast connection speed and really good value. This year price has nearly doubled and connection speed not much better than old dial up here in Portugal - three or four minutes for kids to even watch a youtube film trailer. Could be our location but for over £100 for two weeks for me it's a never again sadly.

I ordered my Tep unit about two weeks before my depature and got it about three days before.
The unit worked flawlessly and had good battery life.

At one time during my trip, I thought I had lost my unit. I emailed the Tep team at night asked them to block the SIM. I got a reply early next morning and they could block it immediately.
Later the same day, I recovered my lost unit, emailed the Tep team again and had internet within 15 minutes.