mobile broadband

[coppicer]

An update on my 3 modem as I have just been over to Italy for a couple of weeks. Initially it did not work and despite the fact that I had asked for it to have international roaming, it had not been set up. After a long conversation with India on my 3 mobile (cost nothing), who had no idea where Italy is, and having to speak to a supervisor, it is now working fine. After a week of emails, I have used very little of my 1GB allowance for the month. I will try surfing and logging onto the forum when I am over again for the summer and see how that eats into my allowance.

[jmcklveen]

Thanks for this info. I thought it might be a solution for me. I am living in Grignano near Naples and have no internet connection until we can rent a house & get phones & ADSL set up etc. This will be another month at least. I checked on the web site to see what the 3 UK coverage was in this area, and it looks like it would reach us here, but when I checked on a friends mobile phone, it said it was picking up only TIM, VodafoneIT, and I WIND.
This means I would be roaming here right? The coverage map is quite difficult to see properly as it is quite small.
I checked with Vodaphone & they want 199 Euros for a connect card plus 30 euros per month (for the pre-paid plan) for 100 hours.
I am pulling my hair out without a connection!
Anyone have any ideas? I need a pre pay temporary solution to tide me over until we get the land line set up.

[Sprostoni]

SIM4travel - Global roaming SIM cards - the international mobile SIM card they do PAYG as well.........................

Check the pricing

[lupo]

Hi jmckiven,
Too tired (after my hard day breaking rock in Umbria) to back track on this thread, but for what it's worth, I'm responding to your post on a TIM mobile broadband SIM card, evenings from 17:00 pm to 9:00 am and all weekend/feast days unlimited tariff: 25 euros per month. It's been bullet proof so far and we were set up by the second day of our arrival here. If you get a good signal on your voice mail/phone with TIM Vodaphone et al, why bother yourself with anything else for a data signal? I would assume that it's best to use what ever service works well on your phone in italy, if you want mobile broadband. This is an especially long thread that you've posted on; it's the thread that I used to get my internet up and running and you'll find lots of excellent advice on earlier posts. Hope you get sorted soon.

[juliancoll]

Originally Posted by jmcklveen

Thanks for this info. I thought it might be a solution for me. I am living in Grignano near Naples and have no internet connection until we can rent a house & get phones & ADSL set up etc. This will be another month at least.

Isn't Grignano near Grottaminarda? If so, you will be waiting a lot longer than a month unless you rent a place with a phone line already installed/active. Take whatever decent mobile connection you can get and prepare to wait six months or more for Telecom to acknowledge you exist.

[jmcklveen]

Thank you all for your replies.
Gricignano is not near Grottaminarda - it is about 25 minutes north of Naples - kind of in-between Naples and Caserta.
I looked at the web site for Sim4Travel, but I don’t think it will work for me. It costs 25p per minute, which adds up to a lot surfing.
I don’t want to use TIM mobile broadband, or Vodaphone’s internet option on their plan as I only need a connection for about a month. I really need a pay-as-you go option that will see me through until we get a land line put in at the house. We have checked that the previous tenants had phone & internet access so we are expecting a relatively quick turn-around time for getting hooked up. I want a land line ADSL as I need an ‘always on’ connection for unlimited surfing. I am a web designer & work from home. I also want to be able to plug in my Vonage router to the connection as this gives me unlimited calls to the US and to the UK for $25 per month. WAY cheaper than the charges I am incurring at the moment using the hotel phone line.
In the mean time – if I use the Vodaphone PAYG then they want me to pay 199 Euros to buy the USB connect card – VERY expensive.
My brother lives in the UK, so I got him to check out the 3 store & their deal. This is what he found out…
“[FONT='Trebuchet MS','sans-serif']The 3 store recommends NOT buying their device for use in Italy as the prepaid element won't work on a PAYG modem stick - only pay monthly. The rates are £1 per mb which is really expensive. I spoke to their head office and they said the best thing to do is to buy the same USB modem from a 3 Italia store which will work in exactly the same way but be much much cheaper.”[/font]
So I guess now I am looking for a 3 Italia store & a translator.
BTW – I think that the 3 Store needs to clarify this information on their web site. What they are saying via their sales people & the head office does not gel with what they are saying on their web site.
If & when I finally get a decent solution, I will be passing out the info among the people in our small ex-pat community as there are literally hundreds of people per year having the same situation as me needing a temporary solution when they first get here.

[Cassini]

The TIM sim broadband, mentioned by Lupo, is Pay as you go. It is not automatically renewed. You have to renew it on the day following expiry of 30 days. You can leave a long gap of several months and then renew again.

[pigro]

Three UK dongles, both USB Card and USBstick, work fine in Italy if you are in coverage from the Tre Italia network. I had both types working fine in my house in Umbria this August. There is in any case no reason why any specific shape/connection type of 3G Modem would not be compatible with any specific country (or network), any more so than a clamshell phone would work when a candy bar shape didn't.