Connect to the Internet in Greece

Connect with a pre-paid internet card

If you bring your laptop computer to Greece you will undoubtedly want to connect to the internet so you can check your email, and surf around for information.

I agonized over it, but upon arrival to Greece I found out that there is an easy way to gain internet access without signing up with an ISP. All you need is a "prepaid internet card" which you can purchase from a "Periptero" (the ubiquitous yellow kiosks).

I bought a NetKey card for €10 which allows for 20 hours of connection and after fiddling around for ten minutes with my laptop (a Macintosh PowerBook G4) I was promptly connected to the internet.

The card provides a username and a password, instructions how to set-up your computer for connection, and directions on how to set-up every possible operating system (Windows 95-98, Millennium, 2000, XP, Mac OS 8 or later. No instructions for OS X were provided, but I had my computer up in no time). On the card you will also find a telephone number for the dial-up connection which you can dial form anywhere in Greece. The telephone charge is an added expense, and when I called the technical support line I found on the card, a polite lady answered after two or three rings, and she informed me that it costs about 120 drachma (about US $0.25) per hour to connect through the special number provided by the card.

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When I bought the prepaid internet card the seller at the periptero showed me several I could choose from. They all provided 20 hours of connection, and of course I chose the one with the lower cost -- the NetKey (www.netkey.gr). The NetKey card is issued by ForthNet, the largest ISP in Greece, and the number your dial is the same for the entire country. A friend of mine bought an internet card from "acn" and had nothing but trouble with it. To make matters worst, the card cost €5.00 more than the ForthNet card, and they charged for the telephone technical support (while ForthNet is Free).

So, if you have a laptop computer with a modem, and access to a live telephone line, head for the nearest yellow kiosk and buy a prepaid internet card (if you don't speak greek here is what you say: mia proplyromene karta internet). I am not sure what the availability of these cards is in smaller towns, so you might want to get one while you are in Athens or at the airport. The account is not renewble, and once you use the 20 hours you have to buy another one and replace the old username and password with the new one.

You will also need a telephone cable. Many hotels have a telephone jack that would fit in a modem port. Simply unplug it from the telephone and plug it into the modem port of your computer and it will work like a charm. If your hotel has the old telephone outlets, you might need a modular telephone adapter to connect your telephone line to the Greek telephone jack on the wall. I keep an adapter and an extra telephone cable in my computer back pack just in case I need them.

Here is my list of what you need to pack for your trip to Greece

Link: List of Internet Cafes in Greece