How it started

It started with a race in the Swiss Alps: 26 kilometres and 1,200 metres of climbing, from Leukerbad over the ridge to Crans-Montana. But it was never one trip. Sport has taken me abroad for years — trail races, CrossFit, ski touring, days in the mountains — with ordinary travel in between.

Every one meant finding mobile data abroad: tracking and the organiser, navigation and weather, staying reachable, booking the next thing. And every time it went the same way — more expensive than it looked, never clear what I was getting, an unexpected charge at the end, nobody to talk to when it broke. You have no choice about needing it, and the people selling it know that. After enough years, I built my own.

I write backend systems for a living — the kind that talk to other companies’ APIs all day and are not allowed to fall over. This is held to that standard. The price is the price you pay, nothing added at the end, and what a plan includes is written where you buy it. When something breaks, you reach the people who built it. A ridge with no road, a taxi from the airport in Bali — same thing either way: online the moment you land, no surprises. And it does not rest on one person: I build Semper online with friends, each of us good at a different part of it. Run from the Czech Republic — and this is only the start.