Pros & Cons
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- Easy to use.
- Comes with power adapter and external battery.
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- 3G data speeds only in many territories.
ZTE MF60 (TelecomSquare) Specs
| Service Provider | Other |
I attended IFA 2015 in Berlin a few weeks ago and I needed a backup Internet connection. As a T-Mobile user I have access to unlimited international roaming data in Germany, but at a severely throttled speed. To supplement that connection, I looked for a faster solution with TelecomSquare, an Internet provider for international travelers. The company offers a Mobile WiFi Hotspot that would work in Germany at a rate of $12.95 per day, with no data limit, and all equipment included. For my five-day stay in Berlin, that was $69.75 before tax and a $5 shipping fee to get the hotspot to a nearby travel agency for me to pick up in time for the show. It's a simple way to stay connected when traveling, though its 3G-only connection in many territories feels sluggish in an LTE world.
The Hotspot
TelecomSquare offers rental hotspots for 41 countries, with LTE in the U.K., Japan, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea, and 3G service in its other territories. The company set me up with a ZTE MF60 3G hotspot in a zip-up leather carrying case with all of the equipment I needed for it to work. Besides the hotspot itself, the case includes a two-prong wall charger, a small Road Warrior international wall adapter, two USB-to-micro USB cables, and a Panasonic 5,400mAh battery pack with two USB ports. It's a solid little travel package in a single convenient case I could toss in my bag.
The hotspot is a tiny, glossy black plastic puck the approximate size and shape of a flip phone. A small blue LED display sits on the front, showing connection status. The right edge holds a Power button, a microSD card slot, and a WPS button. The left edge holds an antenna connector behind a small plastic door. The micro USB port for charging sits on the bottom edge, and the SIM card slot is hidden behind the hotspot's 1,500mAh battery under the removable back plate. The battery is rated for up to four hours of use. Since this is a rental device, the SIM card is held under anti-tampering tape; you can't use your own card.
The hotspot is designed to work out of the box, with all of the necessary information in the included documentation or taped to the back of the hotspot. TelecomSquare puts a clear label on the back panel of the hotspot showing its default SSID and the WPA key. New users will find it very simple to get up and running.
Service
The documentation claims the hotspot can manage speeds of up to 21.6Mbps downstream and 5.76Mbps upstream, but that wasn't the case in Berlin. I consistently got a 3G connection throughout Potsdamer Platz, Aleksanderplatz, the Berlin Tegel airport, and the Messe Berlin convention center, with two or more reception bars on the small screen. The speed tests I ran showed approximately 5Mbps downstream and 0.5Mbps upstream. This was significantly faster than the throttled T-Mobile international roaming service I saw on my phone, by a factor of at least four. But it's not fast enough to send video or large image files in any reasonable amount of time. I didn't notice a data cap or throttling on the hotspot's connection, which TelecomSquare advertises as unlimited.
TelecomSquare doesn't offer the fastest Internet connection, but its rental hotspot was more reliable and quicker than my own T-Mobile service in Berlin, and was very useful when filing stories from IFA. The service is similar to, but slightly less expensive than our former top pick, the XCom Global, although XCom's 175 supported countries eclipses TelecomSquare's 41 territories. Our current Editor's Choice for trips to Europe, though, is the My Webspot 4G+ Pocket WiFi, which offers much faster 4G LTE service in many European locales.