December 17, 2025 • 12 mins
Show Notes: Worldschooling Q&A – Episode 15
Episode Title: Episode 15: What Are the Best WiFi Options for Worldschooling?
Hosts: Astrid & Clint, creators of The Wandering Daughter
Episode Summary:In this episode of Worldschooling Q&A, Astrid and Clint tackle one of the most critical topics for traveling families who work or learn remotely: reliable WiFi on the road.
Drawing from years of full-time travel across 18+ countries, they share real-world experiences—from stunning Italian farmhouses with unusable internet to total digital dead zones that forced last-minute relocations. This episode breaks down practical WiFi strategies every worldschooling or digital nomad family should understand before hitting the road.
They cover international cell phone plans, local SIM cards, hotspots, Starlink, and how to properly vet Airbnb WiFi before booking. You’ll also learn why having a backup plan (and a backup to that backup) is essential, plus how tools like VPNs and travel routers can protect your data and improve connection stability.
Whether you’re working remotely, homeschooling online, or just trying to stay connected while traveling, this episode offers realistic guidance to help you avoid common WiFi pitfalls and stay productive anywhere in the world.
🎧 Ready to dive in? 👉 For full show notes, resource links, and a complete episode guide, visit: https://thewanderingdaughter.com/episode-15-wifi-options-for-worldschooling/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And I think after that Italy Airbnbexperience, that's one of the questions
that we always ask our hosts,
when we say like, what's the Wi-Fi speed?
Can you send us a screenshotof the speeds, or at least tell us what
what it is?
This is World School and Q&A.
I'm Astrid,creator of The Wandering Daughter.
(00:21):
As a traveling family,we've spent four years traveling
full time to over 18countries and six continents.
Wherever we go, we try to learn
as much as we canabout the countries and cultures we visit.
While we didn't coined the term,we like to call this world schooling.
Using the world as our classroom.
Each week, my husband Clint,and I will answer one question about world
(00:43):
schooling and share our experiencesof traveling the world with our kids.
Ready to get started?
Great. Let's dive in.
So for today's episode,we're going to answer the question
what are the best Wi-Fi optionsfor digital nomads?
(01:07):
I think this is a topicthat Clint will be excited to talk about.
He is the resident techie of the family.
Yeah.
Before he started traveling, I was always
the guy figuring out the Wi-Fiand internet and all that.
So it's no surprise that that was alsoone of my tasks while we were traveling.
It's it's no joke, like,especially if you're working remotely,
(01:30):
you got to figure out the Wi-Fi source.
I think when we used to goto conferences, world's going conferences
where we meet other families, inevitablysomeone would want to geek out
or want to know,how can I figure out better Wi-Fi options?
And, you know, truth be told,we're pretty spoiled.
I mean, you know, being here in the USor Canada or, like,
(01:53):
there's really good Wi-Fi options,really good internet.
It there's, you know, we see Wi-Fiand it's not always Wi-Fi.
It's just any internet options in general.
But yeah.
So yeah.
So let's just kind of go throughsome of these that we used.
And I think the the biggest thingI want to say first of all is
have a backup plan to your backup planif working is important. Yes.
(02:16):
Make sure you have multiple backup plansfor that.
Nothing worse than having to do a meeting.
And you don't have internet,or you have really
spotty internet, especially if you'remeeting requires you to have video on.
Yeah,that can that can be a huge dealbreaker.
I, I just rememberwe stayed at this gorgeous Airbnb
(02:38):
in Italy, in the Parma region.
It was like this old farmhouse,600 years old or something like that.
And overlooking the Italian countryside.
Super picturesque.
The Wi-Fi there was awful.
I mean, and also not accessiblelike we weren't.
It was locked up in an atticand so we weren't able
(03:00):
to, like, go and restart it or anything.
So we were kind of just like held tothe whims of the Wi-Fi gods or whatever.
And there were timeswhere the other thing was like,
you know, we had our cell phonesand we could connect to hotspot
if we could,but only because it was a stone house,
only if we were standing in a windowand facing outside.
(03:25):
So it definitely was like there were timeswhere I had to do a meeting
and he's you see him, he'sjust like on the window
ledge with his computer facingwhen the outside
and the phone, like right therebecause we just couldn't do it.
There was no other option to. Yeah.
To do it. So.
Yeah. So backups to the backups.
(03:45):
Yeah. We understand the Wi-Fi woes.
I think the first thing to do
is to make sure you have a solid homecell service plan.
So whatever phone plan you have right now,wherever you live,
check to see if there'sif there's international options for that.
Here in the US, we use Google Fi.
That's a great option for us.
It allows us to use it and actually,yeah, T-Mobile
(04:08):
is another great optionfor traveling internationally.
And Verizonis a little bit more expensive,
but they also havesome international plans as well.
The one thing is,check your terms of service.
We have gotten cut off both times,or we've gotten
cut off both with GoogleFi and T-Mobile while we were traveling.
Because if you're usinga certain amount of data
and it's monthafter month of being out of the country
(04:31):
at that breaks their terms of serviceand sometimes they will cut you off.
We've had better luck with GoogleFi on that.
Also, GoogleFi doesn't cut you completely off.
T-Mobile forces you to resetonce you come back in the States.
Google fi allows you kind of resetonce a month starts over.
So there's some flexibility there.
But yeah, make sure you have a good planto come up with.
(04:54):
But I guess the next thingthen would be like,
look at your lodging wi fi option.
So we like to stay in Airbnbs.
And I think after that Italy Airbnbexperience, that's one of the questions
that we always ask our hostswhen we say like, what's the Wi-Fi speed?
Can you send us a screenshotof the speeds, or at least tell us what
(05:15):
what it is and what we're up front like,hey, we need to be able to take meetings
or we're going towe're planning on working from,
you know, being on the computera lot and having access to internet
is important to us.
So what is the speed like there?
Yeah, and I think even after Italy,we we started asking this of Airbnb hosts.
(05:36):
And there was one time in Indonesiawhere they said,
yeah, we have we have internet here.
And I think they even senta screenshot of the thing and it was okay,
but we got thereand there was no Wi-Fi at all.
Yeah, it was like a dead zone.
Total dead zone.
Not even cell service. Nothing.
We actually ended uphaving to leave that Airbnb
(05:57):
because there is just no way wewe were supposed to stay there a month.
Yeah, and there was just no waywe could have done it. Yeah.
Having said that, this actually wouldn'thave helped us in this situation.
But one of the things that we always donow is I think we only do this
if we're going to be therelonger than two weeks.
Otherwise we don't really do this.
Yeah, I guess so.
We get a local SIM card.
(06:18):
So we have the phonesthat we have allow us to do
an eSIM and a localor in a physical SIM card.
So the eSIM is just our normal phone plan.
Yeah, but then the localSIM card is wherever we'll just go by,
and they're really easy to get.
Sometimes we get them at the airport,sometimes it convenient.
So it just depends on where we're at.Yeah, we always get it.
(06:39):
Make sure whatever you get though,
understand how to refill itbecause that can be really tricky.
In the Philippines,it was very convoluted method of refilling
where you had to buy pointsfrom a certain from convenience stores,
and then the points you had to calland transfer them into minutes.
And it was just right. He took
the not not.
(06:59):
Yeah.
And the other thing is also make sure thethe local SIM card covers
hotspot, because sometimes some cardswon't allow your hotspot.
And if you need to hotspot off ofyour phone for your laptop, for example.
Yeah.You want to be able to that to work. Yeah.
And if you, if you don't haveif your phone doesn't allow you to have,
like two SIM cards, for instance,or like you don't want to switch out
(07:22):
your your SIM from your current phone,you can always like
look for like an inexpensive phonejust to put in a SIM card in there.
And then you will be ableto like hotspot off of that.
Yeah, actually recommend carry
an extra phone if you have onefrom like a Oplan or something
just to use as a hotspotor in case yours doesn't work so well.
(07:44):
Yeah.
What about thoselike global hotspot things?
Yeah. So we think about that. Yeah.
Until recentlythose have not worked out very well.
Yeah.We used tap in the past and they were.
And we use anI can't remember the name of it right off.
And there was another one that we tried.Yeah.
We just did not have good luck with them.
They just are slow.
And they tend to be expensive.
(08:05):
Yeah. Really expensive per data.
Starlink is a popular choice now.
So the what is Starlink?
Yeah.
So Starlink is a companyis an Elon Musk company.
They basically created this low orbitsatellite internet.
And you know, when it first came out,it was like these
really big kind of module things.
(08:26):
Not really big, fairlybig module things you would carry around.
They had to be a little bit stationary.
But now they have these more chargeableunits that are used in RVs and stuff.
Yeah,it just connects to low orbit satellite.
But they globallythey actually work really well.
As long as you have clear accessto the sky
that it's a great optionfor, for internet.
And they tend to be a little expensive.
(08:48):
There's like an initial feeand then a subscription fee,
but they're actually considerably lessthan, say, those global hotspots.
They work a lot better.
And so if you're using that exclusively,then that could.
We know some people that do that,especially in the Arab world.
And then it's worked out well.
What elseother than just like something you have on
you like other publicother ways to get Wi-Fi other than that?
(09:09):
I mean, you can always go for like,you know, public Wi-Fi co-working
spaces will have that.
There's security considerationsto think about.
We would recommend getting like a VPNjust to.
You can talk a little bit more about thatbecause again,
I think you're more familiar with itthan I am.
Yeah.
Co-working spaces and and public Wi-Fi
(09:30):
options, can be great in a pinch.
Yeah. For sure.
We just highly recommend using a VPNso you can have a VPN app on your phone.
We pay for our VPN service.
We pay for our.
ExpressVPN has been great for us.
It also allows you to stream like your USbased streaming services too.
If you're traveling.
(09:51):
Now, having said that though,a lot of times you'll have to do
you have to have like a travel routerto be able to connect
to VPN for like streaming services,like through your computer
or something like that.
So that's something to keep in mind.
I do recommenddoing a little travel router if possible,
and that's largelyjust because sometimes the router
(10:11):
in the Airbnb or the hotelespecially is notorious for this.
Their routers are horrible.
So if you can, if you can get accessto the modem, for example, and,
and just plug into thatand have your own little travel router
or to just extend a Wi-Fi signal,
those travel routers can be hugeand you can get them
as small as a deck of playing cards.
(10:32):
So they're actually can be really smallto travel.
There's something thatI've heard of recently, and they're SMEs,
like international SMEs or but I think
kind of like those global hotspots.
But I haven't heard much aboutor I haven't dug into that that much.
So but just to like throw it out therethat that's, that's an option.
(10:55):
Yeah. And it's a fieldthat's ever it's constantly changing.
It's even more the more there isinternational travel and business travel.
Yeah.
These things are only going to get better.
So yeah.
So I actually wrote
a great article on my sitecovering like international Wi-Fi options.
So if you're curious about like gettinginto more detail in that about this,
(11:17):
that topic, you can check out the articleon the website.
Cool.
Anything else?
No, but I think that's it for today.
Well, that's all for today.
Thank you for joining uson this episode of World Schooling.
Q&A with Astrid and Clint.
Be sure to check out the show notesfor any links we mentioned in the episode,
and visit my website,The Wandering Dot-Com,
(11:38):
to dive deeper into worldschooling and family travel.
If you like what you hear, please considersupporting The Wandering.
Daughter on Patreon.
It really helps us outand keeps the show going.
You'll also get exclusiveperks like episode transcripts,
additional resources, accessto office hours with us, and more.
You can find us on Spotifyor the podcast app of your choice.
If you're listening to this on Spotify,you can tap the bell icon to get notified
(12:01):
when new episodes come out.
And if you like this episode,please give us a.
Five star review.
It really helps new people find our show.
If you're watching this on YouTube, don'tforget to like
and subscribe and tap the bellicon to get notified of new episodes.
You can follow me on Instagram at Wander
Daughter or follow the Wandering Daughteron Facebook.
Links to these are also in the show notes.
(12:24):
If you have any world schooling questionsyou'd like us to answer
for future episodes,feel free to throw them in the comments
or send us a messageat The Wandering daughter.com/podcast.
Until next time, happy travels. Bye.
And I think after that Italy Airbnbexperience, that's one of the questions
that we always ask our hosts,
when we say like, what's the Wi-Fi speed?
Can you send us a screenshotof the speeds, or at least tell us what
what it is?
This is World School and Q&A.
I'm Astrid,creator of The Wandering Daughter.
(00:21):
As a traveling family,we've spent four years traveling
full time to over 18countries and six continents.
Wherever we go, we try to learn
as much as we canabout the countries and cultures we visit.
While we didn't coined the term,we like to call this world schooling.
Using the world as our classroom.
Each week, my husband Clint,and I will answer one question about world
(00:43):
schooling and share our experiencesof traveling the world with our kids.
Ready to get started?
Great. Let's dive in.
So for today's episode,we're going to answer the question
what are the best Wi-Fi optionsfor digital nomads?
(01:07):
I think this is a topicthat Clint will be excited to talk about.
He is the resident techie of the family.
Yeah.
Before he started traveling, I was always
the guy figuring out the Wi-Fiand internet and all that.
So it's no surprise that that was alsoone of my tasks while we were traveling.
It's it's no joke, like,especially if you're working remotely,
(01:30):
you got to figure out the Wi-Fi source.
I think when we used to goto conferences, world's going conferences
where we meet other families, inevitablysomeone would want to geek out
or want to know,how can I figure out better Wi-Fi options?
And, you know, truth be told,we're pretty spoiled.
I mean, you know, being here in the USor Canada or, like,
(01:53):
there's really good Wi-Fi options,really good internet.
It there's, you know, we see Wi-Fiand it's not always Wi-Fi.
It's just any internet options in general.
But yeah.
So yeah.
So let's just kind of go throughsome of these that we used.
And I think the the biggest thingI want to say first of all is
have a backup plan to your backup planif working is important. Yes.
(02:16):
Make sure you have multiple backup plansfor that.
Nothing worse than having to do a meeting.
And you don't have internet,or you have really
spotty internet, especially if you'remeeting requires you to have video on.
Yeah,that can that can be a huge dealbreaker.
I, I just rememberwe stayed at this gorgeous Airbnb
(02:38):
in Italy, in the Parma region.
It was like this old farmhouse,600 years old or something like that.
And overlooking the Italian countryside.
Super picturesque.
The Wi-Fi there was awful.
I mean, and also not accessiblelike we weren't.
It was locked up in an atticand so we weren't able
(03:00):
to, like, go and restart it or anything.
So we were kind of just like held tothe whims of the Wi-Fi gods or whatever.
And there were timeswhere the other thing was like,
you know, we had our cell phonesand we could connect to hotspot
if we could,but only because it was a stone house,
only if we were standing in a windowand facing outside.
(03:25):
So it definitely was like there were timeswhere I had to do a meeting
and he's you see him, he'sjust like on the window
ledge with his computer facingwhen the outside
and the phone, like right therebecause we just couldn't do it.
There was no other option to. Yeah.
To do it. So.
Yeah. So backups to the backups.
(03:45):
Yeah. We understand the Wi-Fi woes.
I think the first thing to do
is to make sure you have a solid homecell service plan.
So whatever phone plan you have right now,wherever you live,
check to see if there'sif there's international options for that.
Here in the US, we use Google Fi.
That's a great option for us.
It allows us to use it and actually,yeah, T-Mobile
(04:08):
is another great optionfor traveling internationally.
And Verizonis a little bit more expensive,
but they also havesome international plans as well.
The one thing is,check your terms of service.
We have gotten cut off both times,or we've gotten
cut off both with GoogleFi and T-Mobile while we were traveling.
Because if you're usinga certain amount of data
and it's monthafter month of being out of the country
(04:31):
at that breaks their terms of serviceand sometimes they will cut you off.
We've had better luck with GoogleFi on that.
Also, GoogleFi doesn't cut you completely off.
T-Mobile forces you to resetonce you come back in the States.
Google fi allows you kind of resetonce a month starts over.
So there's some flexibility there.
But yeah, make sure you have a good planto come up with.
(04:54):
But I guess the next thingthen would be like,
look at your lodging wi fi option.
So we like to stay in Airbnbs.
And I think after that Italy Airbnbexperience, that's one of the questions
that we always ask our hostswhen we say like, what's the Wi-Fi speed?
Can you send us a screenshotof the speeds, or at least tell us what
(05:15):
what it is and what we're up front like,hey, we need to be able to take meetings
or we're going towe're planning on working from,
you know, being on the computera lot and having access to internet
is important to us.
So what is the speed like there?
Yeah, and I think even after Italy,we we started asking this of Airbnb hosts.
(05:36):
And there was one time in Indonesiawhere they said,
yeah, we have we have internet here.
And I think they even senta screenshot of the thing and it was okay,
but we got thereand there was no Wi-Fi at all.
Yeah, it was like a dead zone.
Total dead zone.
Not even cell service. Nothing.
We actually ended uphaving to leave that Airbnb
(05:57):
because there is just no way wewe were supposed to stay there a month.
Yeah, and there was just no waywe could have done it. Yeah.
Having said that, this actually wouldn'thave helped us in this situation.
But one of the things that we always donow is I think we only do this
if we're going to be therelonger than two weeks.
Otherwise we don't really do this.
Yeah, I guess so.
We get a local SIM card.
(06:18):
So we have the phonesthat we have allow us to do
an eSIM and a localor in a physical SIM card.
So the eSIM is just our normal phone plan.
Yeah, but then the localSIM card is wherever we'll just go by,
and they're really easy to get.
Sometimes we get them at the airport,sometimes it convenient.
So it just depends on where we're at.Yeah, we always get it.
(06:39):
Make sure whatever you get though,
understand how to refill itbecause that can be really tricky.
In the Philippines,it was very convoluted method of refilling
where you had to buy pointsfrom a certain from convenience stores,
and then the points you had to calland transfer them into minutes.
And it was just right. He took
the not not.
(06:59):
Yeah.
And the other thing is also make sure thethe local SIM card covers
hotspot, because sometimes some cardswon't allow your hotspot.
And if you need to hotspot off ofyour phone for your laptop, for example.
Yeah.You want to be able to that to work. Yeah.
And if you, if you don't haveif your phone doesn't allow you to have,
like two SIM cards, for instance,or like you don't want to switch out
(07:22):
your your SIM from your current phone,you can always like
look for like an inexpensive phonejust to put in a SIM card in there.
And then you will be ableto like hotspot off of that.
Yeah, actually recommend carry
an extra phone if you have onefrom like a Oplan or something
just to use as a hotspotor in case yours doesn't work so well.
(07:44):
Yeah.
What about thoselike global hotspot things?
Yeah. So we think about that. Yeah.
Until recentlythose have not worked out very well.
Yeah.We used tap in the past and they were.
And we use anI can't remember the name of it right off.
And there was another one that we tried.Yeah.
We just did not have good luck with them.
They just are slow.
And they tend to be expensive.
(08:05):
Yeah. Really expensive per data.
Starlink is a popular choice now.
So the what is Starlink?
Yeah.
So Starlink is a companyis an Elon Musk company.
They basically created this low orbitsatellite internet.
And you know, when it first came out,it was like these
really big kind of module things.
(08:26):
Not really big, fairlybig module things you would carry around.
They had to be a little bit stationary.
But now they have these more chargeableunits that are used in RVs and stuff.
Yeah,it just connects to low orbit satellite.
But they globallythey actually work really well.
As long as you have clear accessto the sky
that it's a great optionfor, for internet.
And they tend to be a little expensive.
(08:48):
There's like an initial feeand then a subscription fee,
but they're actually considerably lessthan, say, those global hotspots.
They work a lot better.
And so if you're using that exclusively,then that could.
We know some people that do that,especially in the Arab world.
And then it's worked out well.
What elseother than just like something you have on
you like other publicother ways to get Wi-Fi other than that?
(09:09):
I mean, you can always go for like,you know, public Wi-Fi co-working
spaces will have that.
There's security considerationsto think about.
We would recommend getting like a VPNjust to.
You can talk a little bit more about thatbecause again,
I think you're more familiar with itthan I am.
Yeah.
Co-working spaces and and public Wi-Fi
(09:30):
options, can be great in a pinch.
Yeah. For sure.
We just highly recommend using a VPNso you can have a VPN app on your phone.
We pay for our VPN service.
We pay for our.
ExpressVPN has been great for us.
It also allows you to stream like your USbased streaming services too.
If you're traveling.
(09:51):
Now, having said that though,a lot of times you'll have to do
you have to have like a travel routerto be able to connect
to VPN for like streaming services,like through your computer
or something like that.
So that's something to keep in mind.
I do recommenddoing a little travel router if possible,
and that's largelyjust because sometimes the router
(10:11):
in the Airbnb or the hotelespecially is notorious for this.
Their routers are horrible.
So if you can, if you can get accessto the modem, for example, and,
and just plug into thatand have your own little travel router
or to just extend a Wi-Fi signal,
those travel routers can be hugeand you can get them
as small as a deck of playing cards.
(10:32):
So they're actually can be really smallto travel.
There's something thatI've heard of recently, and they're SMEs,
like international SMEs or but I think
kind of like those global hotspots.
But I haven't heard much aboutor I haven't dug into that that much.
So but just to like throw it out therethat that's, that's an option.
(10:55):
Yeah. And it's a fieldthat's ever it's constantly changing.
It's even more the more there isinternational travel and business travel.
Yeah.
These things are only going to get better.
So yeah.
So I actually wrote
a great article on my sitecovering like international Wi-Fi options.
So if you're curious about like gettinginto more detail in that about this,
(11:17):
that topic, you can check out the articleon the website.
Cool.
Anything else?
No, but I think that's it for today.
Well, that's all for today.
Thank you for joining uson this episode of World Schooling.
Q&A with Astrid and Clint.
Be sure to check out the show notesfor any links we mentioned in the episode,
and visit my website,The Wandering Dot-Com,
(11:38):
to dive deeper into worldschooling and family travel.
If you like what you hear, please considersupporting The Wandering.
Daughter on Patreon.
It really helps us outand keeps the show going.
You'll also get exclusiveperks like episode transcripts,
additional resources, accessto office hours with us, and more.
You can find us on Spotifyor the podcast app of your choice.
If you're listening to this on Spotify,you can tap the bell icon to get notified
(12:01):
when new episodes come out.
And if you like this episode,please give us a.
Five star review.
It really helps new people find our show.
If you're watching this on YouTube, don'tforget to like
and subscribe and tap the bellicon to get notified of new episodes.
You can follow me on Instagram at Wander
Daughter or follow the Wandering Daughteron Facebook.
Links to these are also in the show notes.
(12:24):
If you have any world schooling questionsyou'd like us to answer
for future episodes,feel free to throw them in the comments
or send us a messageat The Wandering daughter.com/podcast.
Until next time, happy travels. Bye.
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