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Summer is a popular travel time. School’s out, people are using their accumulated vacation time, and the weather’s just right for relaxing on an exotic beach somewhere, with all your worries and responsibilities a thousand miles away. But sometimes the pressure to plan the perfect holiday can get overwhelming. Where should you go, anyway? You only get one vacation a year, so make it worthwhile and cross something off that list of once-in-a-lifetime experiences list.

Being an expat often means stretching yourself between two different countries. You’ve got a family back home that misses you, and you’ve got new friends or relatives you’ve made in your new home. With all those border crossings and global contacts, you’ll need a bit more than an old-fashioned payphone to make sure you can keep up communication with everyone.

Striking out on a worldly adventure but not quite willing to cut yourself off from the world? Don’t worry. There’s no reason to leave your contacts behind when you travel nowadays. Staying connected while you journey abroad is not only possible, it’s common and can even be done on the cheap. Gone are the days of your only hope being a pricey long distance phone call or an incredibly slow physical letter.

It’s kind of a goofy name, isn’t it? The Internet of Things? Isn’t the Internet already full of things? Actually, the IoT refers to a near future where all devices, from coffee makers to car computers, are connected to one another via the Internet. It would be a time where your home network would really encompass your entire home.

Streaming Netflix on your phone can use as much as 1GB of data per hour, and if you’re streaming in high definition, that number usually triples. On a solid Wi-Fi connection this is never much of a problem, but if you’re using the data on your phone, you could easily blow through your entire plan in a few hours or less. Even unlimited plans are not safe from data caps because of fair usage policies.

More and more people are taking work with them when they leave the office. For some people, a change of scenery can really get the creative juices flowing. Looking at something other than your four office walls can often be the jumpstart your brain needs to get some serious, high-quality work done. Other times the change is less of a choice as you may find yourself travelling yet again on a foreign business trip or worst of all, hounded by work on your vacation.

Australia’s a prime place to visit for the English-speaking traveller. Many people are won over by the fact that they won’t have to learn a new language to go somewhere exotic. But while an English speaker will have no trouble communicating in Australia, sadly their phones will not be so lucky. If you don’t want to be cut off from all communication while you’re basking on those famous Australian beaches, then you’re going to need to deck out your cell phone with something called a travel SIM card.

South Korea is more popular than ever. Tourism there has been skyrocketing in recent years, and travel sites have been scrambling to keep up. Where should you go in South Korea? How can you stay connected once you’re there? Keeping connected in South Korea is a slightly tougher question. Your cell phone likely won’t work there without swapping out the SIM card and buying some travel data. To do this, you can purchase a local or a global SIM. Local SIM’s can be a bit cheaper, but they don’t have all the advantages of a global SIM.

If you travel a lot, you know that the search for free Wi-Fi is eternal and unforgiving, even in your home country. When you go abroad, the struggle is even worse. Some countries, like Lithuania, are positively lousy with free Internet, but many other travel destinations, like some countries in South America, have some of the sparsest and least reliable Internet in the world. Buying data to use on your phone is great, but if you can burn through it pretty quickly and if you’re travelling in a group, it’s definitely cheaper to buy some internet for everyone to share. That’s where a global wifi hotspot comes into play.