Communication
Volunteers spend lots of time in the water, not on the internet
Pom Pom island is remote and in the middle of the ocean, however it is not hard to get to or communicate with. See Map
Airport – the nearest airport is Tawau (1.5h from Semporna (nearest town). Some volunteers travel to Kota Kinabalu airport ( the capital of Sabah). See Sabah Map
Boat transport – The project is one hour away from Semporna town (30km) and the hospital for emergency medical. The project has a GPS for safe boat travel at night. Boat transport is normally arranged for Mon & Thursday. (see here for transport information)
Mobile phone - The best sim card for phone system to get is Tunetalk by Air Asia or Xpax by Celcom.both normally have a good phone signal and international calls can be made cheaply. More info on mobile phones and calling your loved ones. For smart phones with internet access get Tunetalk or Celcom First. MAXIS-DIGI- HOTLINK have no signal on the island.
Telephone – We have multiple handphones with different operators, plus both the resorts on the island have land line phones for use in an emergency.
Internet – We have 3G internet dongle modems which work in PC’s and are hard to install in Mac’s (not impossible). The 3g internet can be slow!!!. However most volunteers with smart phones (Iphone, Samsung Galaxy, Nokia etc) use 3g sim cards from Tune talk. You can buy the Sim card for rm 10 (£2) with rm 5 credit. These are prepaid – you load them with money and then spend it. The Sim is free, we pass them from vol to vol – the internet costs rm 0.88 (£0.2) per day for 50mb – after that it is rm 0.05 per MB ( 20 MB = 1RM). The volunteers can usually get online for a few hours use every day (laptop or smart phone). The internet speed is slow so please don’t send large numbers of photos. The tune talk connections are usually good enough for SKYPE – sound only. Volunteers will be busy – do not expect facebook posts every day! or Twitter every hour.
If you have a MAC or tablet which won’t accept a 3g SIM card then you need an android phone or an iphone which can broadcast your own wifi signal
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