Internet speeds can make or break the expat experience
As usual, it will be necessary to break potential expats into two distinct groups for the following discussion. There is a small set of expats whose entire goal is to immerse themselves in their new environment, and for that group of people it’s possible that solid internet service might be a distraction. But for the rest of us it’s impossible to overestimate the importance of reliable internet.
Having spent these last two years in different parts of Asia, some countries for weeks and other countries for months, there is a very obvious difference in the overall experience based on the availability of good internet. In cities where I’ve had a solid and fast connection it feels like I can balance out my surroundings with any amount of comfort from back home or the rest of the world. However, in places with slow or intermittent internet access, it can be easy to feel helpless.
Communications
You might be aware that the Skype VOIP service is a lifeline for many expats who want to keep in touch with those back home. As long as both parties have the software you can literally chat, text, or even video-chat for free as long or as often as you want. Even if you want to speak to people without the software you can make very cheap calls to landlines almost anywhere in the world, and this is a luxury that is easy to take for granted.
I arrived in the United Arab Emirates without realizing that the entire Skype service is blocked there by the government (presumably to help the local phone company remain profitable because 90% of the people there are from somewhere else). I could have bought a calling card or gone to a call center and paid maybe 50 cents a minute to call someone in the United States, but that feels like going 10 or 20 years back in time.
In other parts of the world the internet is too slow for even Skype audio, or it drops out completely every minute or two. Again, it’s amazing what the difference is in your existence by having the option to make free or cheap phone calls to almost anyone in the world.
News and current events
Fortunately it doesn’t take a great deal of bandwidth to read news sites or expat forums when you are living abroad, but if you don’t have access at home at all you can really feel lost.
When I was in Kerala in southern India I stayed in a remote guesthouse with broken internet and whose only English-speaking employees were off on holiday. On the third day of the outage I took the long walk into town with my laptop and found a cafe where I could pay to be online. It’s amazing how isolated one can feel with no internet when there are also no other English speakers around.
Entertainment
Perhaps the most critical of these things in the long run sounds like the most frivolous. Some might say that the entire point of living abroad is to break the shackles of life at home and learn to appreciate a whole new set of things. For most people this is wishful thinking at best.
My experience is that expats are much more satisfied in their new home if they at least have the option of keeping up with music, sports, movies, and television from back home. And here, the difference between having a net cafe within walking distance versus a fast internet connection at home is massive.
I wrote not long ago about how expats get entertainment from home and at this point the most popular method is downloading through bittorrent. Yes, it’s somewhere between illegal and unethical, but in most places there are no choices for legally paying for this entertainment.
When I spent a month in Laos I remember waiting 4 hours for a 20MB podcast to (legally) download. Downloading even a single 30-minute episode of a TV show would have taken a full day so it’s just not worth it. Even watching Youtube videos meant perhaps hours of waiting before the thing would start. Since I was only there for a month it was fine, but I’d certainly think twice about living in such a place.
The bottom line
Many expats working for big companies will have the budget to get the best connection possible, but many are going to teach English or work at an NGO in a distant land. It may seem silly before you get there, but honestly if you can arrange for the fastest and most reliable connection in your home, your chances of being happy there are likely to increase greatly.
Even if it costs US$100 a month for a fast connection instead of $10 a month for the slow connection, the fast one may likely be worth it. Do the research before you go and don’t assume that this is a good place to cut corners if your finances are tight.