Our recent holiday to New Caledonia raised, yet again, the tricky issue of how to stay connected. I knew that I hadn’t done enough research before leaving home and would need to google everything once the holiday started: accommodation, car hire, translations, activities, and attractions as well as navigate our way around the island. Although Noumea is a tourist town – the rest of the island is quite remote.
USE FREE WIFI
For the first three days, we were based in Noumea and used the hotel WiFi and the free WiFi at the tourist office at Anse-Vata. This was more than enough to search the internet, keep up with social media and video call family back home as we frequently returned to our centrally located hotel.
Wifi is also available at the Place des Cocotiers, the ferry terminal, the tourist office at Quai Ferry, the municipal market in Moselle Bay. Georges Brunelet Park and Ouen Toro Park also have coverage as do most bars in the ‘party precinct’ of Anse-Vata and Lemon Bay.
But once we left Noumea to travel and explore the rest of the island free WiFi was going to be hard to come by, it being limited to airports and tourist offices.
USE MY AUSTRALIAN SIM AND PROVIDER
In Australia my mobile phone plan is with Kogan (provider Vodaphone). It would have been easy to activate their International Roaming Pack for $15 per day which includes:
- 1GB of data
- 30 Minutes of standard international voice calls and
- 100 Standard SMS messages
Unfortunately, this pack will only work in the following 10 countries: China, Fiji, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, USA & the UK. So while this may be an option when we travel to England next year – it wasn’t much help for our Pacific Paradise.
While we probably wouldn’t use 30 minutes of calls, I was also concerned that with two teenagers 1GB data per day wasn’t going to last very long.
TOURIST CARD – PREPAID SIM
The tourist SIM card can be purchased for 3,180 XPF (approx $43 AUD). The card is valid for up to three months and includes 1,500 XPF of credit for calls, SMS and data on both Grande Terre and the islands.
You can buy one at the airport or any post office (OPT) and will need to present a valid passport to show that you are a tourist. You can recharge online.
I couldn’t find any information about how far the original 1,500 XPF credit would go. Only that you could top-up your data for example; 500 XPF for 250 MB or 2000 XPF for 2GB.
It seemed quite expensive as we still had 9 days to go and I’m sure could easily chew through 2GB a day! Also to share the data would mean having my phone on hotspot all the time and draining the battery.
POCKET WIFI NEW CALEDONIA
Our last option, and the one we ultimately chose, was Pocket WiFi. This can be booked in advance or just picked up from Nouméa’s La Tontouta International Airport or any Post Office.
The cost starts at 1,190 XPF per day ($16 AUD) and drops the longer your hire it.. the lowest is about $8 a day if hired for three months. It does not include phone calls (except VOIP calls such as messenger) but comes with unlimited 4G data.
They present you with the device and the charger in a travel pouch – which we found very useful for storing all our plugs and cords. The charger had both USB and wall socket connections, so we were able to charge it in the hire car.
Although we rented it from the Post Office in Noumea, at the end of the holiday we drop the pocket WiFi pouch to their counter at the Airport. No extra charge. The total cost for ten days was 140 AUD.
Book your Wifi online https://www.ncpocketwifi.com/
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