Sep 292016
 

Traveling in slow internet bandwidth areas

I take pride in calling myself an early adopter of technology and have been a power user of Internet for almost two decades.  At my home and office, I use a 100 Mbps dedicated leased line and a 4G connection on my mobile phone.  I think I left patience in last century somewhere and decided never to wait for my videos and images. I love the high-speed internet, but the major challenge is that not all places have high-speed internet, especially all my favorite places to travel like Spiti or recently visited Ladakh have severe internet connectivity issues

Internet speeds in Ladakh even in the main city Leh are so bad that even loading a normal image from Facebook takes ages.  I must say that for an avid traveler like me the bad internet was frustrating as I like to share pictures and check out my social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter etc.  Even when I am not sharing images of my own, every once in a while I need to check the net on my phone for various things that I am interested in during my travels e.g.

  1. Good places to visit
  2. Great places to eat
  3. Check the feed of people on social media whom I follow
  4. Every now and then listen to songs online or check a video etc.
I wish I had Opera Mini when I was in Ladakh

But on a slow internet connection even a simple activity like uploading or checking an image can be precariously slow and time-consuming. This led me to search for an alternative that will help me

  1. Stay Connected
  2. Consume minimu of my data package
  3. Will upload and download images and videos as quickly as possible.

Most people had only one suggestion that I should wait to reach back to a better connection like a Hotel Wi-Fi or even that I should just stop worrying about the net and upload or check things only when I am back to my hometown.  But even if one does not access Facebook or other social networking sites, there are certain activities that one still needs to finish while traveling e.g.

  1. Paying bills
  2. Checking emails from office and clients and replying to them
  3. Search for latest travel related information

So my search led me to download and try Opera Mini and Opera Max on my phone.

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Opera Mini Browser makes your browsing experience better

Opera Mini is a mobile browser and it helps in faster browsing of websites by using some smart techniques to enhance your mobile browsing experience.

  1. The first thing that Opera Mini does to enhance your browsing experience is to shrink the web pages almost 90 %, so they load much faster and saves you both time and money in form of lesser data consumed.
  2. The second important differentiating factor on Opera Mini is that it reduces your data consumption by blocking annoying ads. As data-consuming graphic heavy ads are blocked, your site loads 89% faster and you can browse faster.
  3. Video Compression: Using a proprietary technology, Opera Mini compresses the videos you want to load so that they play faster on your phone. All it takes is ticking a check button to make this feature work. Watch videos smoothly without any buffering.
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First thing I searched on my Opera Mini Browser was – desi Traveler 🙂

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desi Traveler loaded quickly and without any issues on phone on Opera Mini

The other product from the Opera Stable is Opera Max, an app that actually takes the data compression to the next level leading to faster browsing, and downloading.

So What’s Opera Max? 

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Opera Max helps you in saving data, hence money and time both

Well, Opera Max creates a connection with its own servers on the cloud and data from any app that you want to use is compressed remotely at the Opera Max servers and a then sent to you. Opera Max’s compression technology gets you a lighter version of the web page or video you are watching while helping you save tons of data. You can also restrict your background apps from eating your internet data.

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Opera Max Saves data and lets you take control of your data usage

This is very useful when you have a slow connection, and also when you are paying a hefty amount for your data connection. Opera Max not only saves you time but also money.  Now the obvious question here will be due to all this compression is there a loss in quality of video or images? All I can say here is that on even on the biggest mobile screen most of us will not be able to notice the difference. The reason for same is most of the content even today be it images or videos are created for the larger screen. But on a smaller screen you actually do not need that high-resolution image or video as on a 5-inch screen you can not differentiate between a 1024 px wide image or a 2100 px wide image as your screen is too small for that.

I have switched to Opera Mini and Opera Max on my phone what about you?

If you want to try Opera Mini and Opera Max, you can download them from here

Opera Mini

Opera Max

I would also like to bring your attention to a contest by Opera here. Check the widget below and share about the Opera Mini and Opera Max and you could win gift vouchers worth INR 5000 /-

Travel with Opera

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Download Opera Mini by clicking on image above

Happy Browsing.

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  2 Responses to “How To Overcome Low Internet Bandwidth in Remote Travel Locations”

Comments (2)
  1. Nice insights Prasad. Looks like I should download Opera Mini and make it the standard browser on my phone 🙂

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