Posted: 3/25/2009 3:38:58 AM EDT
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My son who's a US Marine will be deployed to Iraq. He's leaving in 2 days. Is there a WIFI in a military base in IRAQ? Thinking of getting him a laptop so we could communicate through email or video chat. Thanks in advance for the info.
556man |
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my son deployed in January. It took about a month but several of them went together to get internet thats available at FOB Warrior. Speed id slow so when you do a video call on the computer you type back and forth audio dosent happen. Dosen't refresh very often but you get to see them a little. What was suggested to us was to get a local vonage account(killed my wife who works at Qwest), and a 10$ telephone and send it to them after they get their Internet access. That plugs in to the computer line before the computer, and depending on your vonage account, My son has unlimited local and long distance calling. Calls home at will. No more standing in line to use the pay phones. The first 3 months are about 10$ and after that it goes to about 24$ a month. Way cheaper than phone cards and more convenient for him.
bobo |
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Some FOBs have each CHU pre-wired for internet, and the service plans are available for day, week, 2 week, or month IIRC. I don't remember the company, but the user contract is strictly between the user and the company, with the FOB having the ability to shut off the internet incase of a "communications blackout". There are serveral FOBs I am aware of that have this setup with the same company.
The FOB I am on doesn't have the above option. We've got an Iraqi who leases the sat dishes and routers to us. We got 15 people on a dish. While everyone thinks Skype is awesome, it doesn't take too many people on that to kill the bandwidth for everyone. Likewise for the moron downloading off itunes during "peak" times. Sometimes the guys will think before they click and be curtious to each other, other times, they will all try to be bandwidth hogs at the same time. We got that in line by threatening to block the ports for Skype and itunes. Since I am in a Reserve unit, we've got a few IT network admins and software guys who do this in their sleep. The average kid doesn't know enough about computers, routers, etc to effectively do this, or to bypass it with different ports. |
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Don't spend a lot on the laptop. Get cheap, or used if you can. It WILL get beat up, dirty, and sand in every single crack/port/etc.
Like most said, depends on where you are. Most places will have some sort of internet access, and yes it will come in handy for DVD watching, picture viewing, games, etc. |
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Most of the bases here in MNF-W have some sort of internet access in the POG parts of the base and even in some of the grunt living quarters. It's usually just a LAN drop and you buy either time or a download limit. Its pretty slow but at any time other than peak hours you can use it to make skype calls, etc. Hope this helps.
BTW, civilian email on the work computers during the day is locked out but at night you might be allowed depending on the base policy. -Sproocket |