My ‘cloud’ connectivity strategy.

My Pay-as-you-go SIM card from Vodafone arrived yesterday. It cost 20 Euros (with 10 Euros of credit on the contract) and its going to form the last part of my 4-tier mobile Internet connectivity plan for my cloud-based applications and storage, both at home/office and when i’m mobile.

Tier 1 is, of course, my home broadband connection. Cable. 6mbps / 600kbps upload. Bundled with Digital TV, digital radio and telephony its a great value package for the home (which is also my office.)

Tier 2 is a 200MB per month HSDPA 7.2Mbps-capable, business-level Internet access contract from Vodafone. The SIM card normally sits in my Everun which I use when I’m out. It can also act as a hotspot if Tier1 fails or if I’m out and need to share a connection. 200MB is a lot of data and unless you are downloading big documents or wanting to do always-on work, it works well. Costs – 20 Euro per month.

Tier 3 is a flat-rate html/http proxied access service from Vodafone. This service is on my mobile phone voice contract and actually acts as an always-on Tier1 for email, rss, IM, A-gps and maps when I’m mobile. In certain situations, I might use this as a short-term Bluetooth tethered connection for devices that don’t have built-in HSDPA. Cost – 10 Euro per month.

Tier 4 is the new addition that will act as fall-back for everything. When needed I can use this as a business-level flat-rate Internet access service for 15 Euros per day. I don’t expect to use this much at all but there might be mobile situations where I need it because soon, my Tier 2 will switch to T-Mobile HSDPA+hotspot, thus spreading the risk over 2 providers. Tier 4 also includes an element of cheap roaming capability.

For mobile professionals that rely on the Internet, a tiered access strategy is a must and at 30 Euros/month, its easy to justify in a business situation. This PAYG solution makes an even cheaper solution for people wanting to use Internet on a daily basis too.

Do you have a connectivity strategy? What about U.S. readers. The strategy above would be very difficult to set up would it not?

Note: I live in Germany.