Can I Connect?

Many of the home exchange sites provide only a tick-box to select whether the home has internet access or not. You never know whether it’s a dialup or a high speed wireless connection. Many a home swapper has experienced this problem but still the sites have not updated the sites to include the details of the type of internet connection. An even worse internet pot hole is the data limited broadband, some offering as low as 200 MB per month. This can be used up in a few days of browsing, photo uploading and internet phone calls. Home swappers who are not aware of this fact would end up crossing the limit and the owner would be charged for over usage. Ultimately the guests would have to pay for the ridiculously over charged service but still if people are forewarned things could have been much better.  There are also equally bad contracts where the ISP limits your data speeds to that slower than a dial up once you cross a specified data limit. It’s real fun if you like watching the pages load bit by bit. Most of the ISP’s offer one change per month for free but some of them charge as much as $50 to change you back to the original plan. Being aware of these possible hiccups can go a long way in solving most of the internet connection queries.    If continues access is not necessary then you can always use the nearest internet café. After all these are plentiful in most of the bigger cities and they usually offer a discount, if you agree to use their services regularly for a certain period of time.

 

The various problems regarding the internet access in home exchanges have been a subject which is not likely to be solved anytime soon. Either the home exchange sites should take the initiative or upgrade to include more info or the people themselves should make it clear in their description what sort of internet connection they have. The former is going to be difficult as there are thousands of variations in internet connections across various countries. For instance in Australia alone there is a variation based on connection speeds, limits on usage and charges for services.  It is difficult for these sites to provide anything more than a simple tick box to indicate that internet usage is available. Moreover, it would be impossible for them to include every possible connection and keep updating it. It is similar to the car exchange where the site has a tick box that a car is available exchange, they cannot be expected to list the model number or whether it is air-conditioned or not. So to keep the home exchange listing as concise as possible it is necessary to provide just the tick box for internet usage and car exchange so that people can have a quick glance and check the possibilities. In case the swapper needs a high speed internet connection he/she can always include that in the own listing.

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