This morning I was prompted by a remark from a friend to say a few words about getting online in Bali. For better or worse, while in most parts of Southern Bali, one need never (or almost never) lose contact with email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and all the rest.
On previous visits our primary source of Internet access had been a little “Internet café” behind the local bus terminal. It was cheap and generally quite reliable, if a little grotty. (If memory serves, my wife set up a two-week family holiday in Tuscany from that very spot!) But, even back in the day, ten minutes by motorbike was anything but convenient when all you needed was to send a quick email, or confirm that a check had cleared. Nonetheless, at a time when the Internet was something of a scarce resource, this still seemed a good way to keep in touch with family, work and the rest of the known universe.
Obviously things have moved on since. Our little community alone has at least four functioning Internet cafés, while those who can afford the luxury gain access to email, Facebook and Skype using their smartphones—most commonly a Blackberry.
There are many ways to get online in Bali, some more expensive than others. My wife and I are both using iPhones, which have been surprisingly easy to adapt for the purpose.
Before leaving the States, we had jailbroken and unlocked our phones. For those who aren’t familiar with the technology (and terminology), jailbreaking basically entails running a program (or, more recently, visiting a website) that cedes control of the device’s operating system to the owner, who can then download apps and other ‘packages’ that modify the way the phone works. Presently, these ‘packages’ are most readily available through Cydia, which is in many ways the jailbroken counterpart to Apple’s ‘App Store’.
A particularly useful package is the one that ‘unlocks’ the phone, freeing it from its original carrier (e.g., AT&T, Orange, Telkomsel). In the past these procedures and those who facilitated them worked in a grey area of the law. However, jailbreaking is now legally sanctioned by a statement from the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress.
As a brief aside, I’ve deliberately omitted specific details on jailbreaking procedures and ‘packages’ as I don’t wish to be responsible for the consequences of mistakes—either my own, or someone else’s. The best site for keeping up on all things jailbroken is that of the ‘Dev Team’, who play an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse with Apple’s software developers. Other blogs worth following include 9to5 Mac and iPhone Download Blog, which has easy-to-follow instructions for these and other iPhone tweaks.
So what does all this mean for getting online in Bali? Having jailbroken and unlocked our phones, we were able to purchase new simcards when we arrived in Jakarta for Rp.25,000 (approx. $2.75, US). Then one simply adds ‘pulsa’ (pre-paid cellphone credit) that can be purchased in any of the numerous kiosks lining most inhabited parts of Java and Bali (and, presumably, much of the rest of the archipelago). For anyone who’s traveled in Indonesia, this much is de rigeur. Pulsa will allow you to make phonecalls and send SMS messages (local, long-distance and international). But it will also get you online. Within moments of purchasing my simcard on a street corner in central Jakarta, I was checking email and doing a quick trawl for local restaurants. Hurrah!
Droid does… A picture from our hotel bathroom in Jakarta. (Gareth, it looks like we frequent the same hotel!)
That said… unless you’re terribly careful, the iPhone will simply hemorrhage pulsa. One goes to bed with Rp.100,000 in credit, only to wake up with more than half of it gone—usually from the iPhone’s automated email-checking, calendar synching and so on. What to do? There are several options.
Our first solution came by way of a ‘package’ available on Cydia, after jailbreak. It’s called SBSettings, and it allows you to control the iPhone’s Data and 3G capabilities with a simple on-off toggle accessible directly from the Springboard. (NB: the Springboard is basically the ‘homescreen’ through which you access apps and other functions on the iPhone—it’s what you see first when you turn on the phone.) The toggles allow you to use your pulsa sparingly, when you really need it—to check email, Skype etc. However, using pulsa to get online remains a comparatively expensive option. It’s great for a quick fix, but you should really explore other options for the longer term.
This is especially the case if you wish to ‘tether’ your phone for use with a laptop or another device. Again, having jailbroken, there is an extremely useful—if pricy, at $20—little package called ‘MyWi 4.0’ that allows you to set up a wireless network offering online access for other devices through your 3G data connection. (In passing, you’ll also need a package like My3G to bypass Apple’s restriction on using programs like Skype from a non-WiFi connection.) In my case, this means a MacBook Pro and an iPad. And yes, it works beautifully! So long as we have a good data connection (and this is occasionally a problem in the early to mid-afternoon), I am able to sit at my laptop (or lounge with my iPad) and surf the Net, check email and do all the other things one does online.
Click the picture to see a larger image. From left to right, the first image is a screenshot from the homescreen of the iPhone Springboard. Note that ‘MyWi 4’ is running in the background (see blue border at the top of the screen), showing the amount of data both up- and down-loaded on my tethered laptop. The center image shows the SB-Settings toggle interface that allows you to switch Data and 3G on and off—click once for red (off), and again for green (on). This little set of controls can be accessed simply by swiping your finger across the top edge of the screen, and closed by clicking the little red box marked ‘x’ in the upper lefthand corner. The third screenshot shows the user interface for MyWi 4 when it’s running as the main application. Its default setting allows it to run in the background while you run other apps, or none at all.
When it comes to the data itself, an alternative route is to pre-pay for a data package. There are various options here—we plumped for the Rp.400,000 (approx. $45, US) per month ‘unlimited’ package. Without going into excessive detail (for more see, e.g., Telkomsel), this option offers the first 1.5GB (per month) at a reasonably quick up- and download rate, which then slows down when you exceed the limit. The connection is neither blazingly fast, nor is the data quantity enough for serious daily use. But it works just fine for our present purposes. We’ll probably arrange for a proper ‘high speed’ unlimited connection with Smart Telkom when we move to our new accommodation in a couple of weeks—at which point, I’ll probably have a few more comments to add. In the meantime, TTFN.
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Tags: ethnography and Internet, getting online in Bali, iPhone
