Lay My Hat

Hi Guys,

just wondered if anyone has any experience of Dongles in Italy. I'm looking for one but they all seem very pricey - if anyone knows of any that don't cost the earth that would be brilliant!

Cheers.

Can you not buy in another Country & place the sim card ????

I was wondering if that would work or if I could bring a UK vodaphone dongle over and just use that.
Never used a dongle before though so I'm not sure how it works!

You can use a Vodafone dongle with no problems, however it is much cheaper to buy a Vodafone IT SIM card and use that. If you go in to a Vodafone shop in Italy they will provide you with a pay as you go SIM, which you can top up whenever it runs out.

Thanks for all the help guys - I am dongled up now and it's working a treat!

We used various TIM and then Vodafone dongles for about 6 months and although on paper the deals looked good we got caught out a couple of times. Firstly the monthly deals with each network don't last for long so if you are tied to one network you may end up paying the new (not so favourable) rate before too long. We also got stuffed with download limits at least once so be careful not to do too much heavy stuff ie upgrades or streaming video or you will find your allowance gets eaten up pretty quickly. Just keep an eye on your usage e in bocca al lupo!

Agree with Tartuffa. We have a vodafone dongle and it works very well but teh tarriff has increased following the end of the special tarriff. The majority of the guests seem to now ask for internet - so it's pretty useful.

I have a vodafone dongle here in Portugal for my guests. It's pay as you go and I can load credit on it via internet banking which is very practical.

Costs €1 per hour so not the cheapest internet in the world but great for guests who just want to check up on emails and stuff. Some don't even use it but those who do pay me at cost.

We had a Vodaphone dongle that didn't really work &
replaced it with a TIM dongle.

The main problems are:

1) people tend to leave it on, even though they're told to log out when they've finished a session.

2) The rates start low & then go up.

3) It's a bit slow, the signal isn't great & it's only for checking emails & light surfing.

4) Lastly dongles are no good for ipads that are WiFi only. So anyone with a non 3G ipad can't access the net.

So we've given up & are going for WiFi broadband, whereby you get a router that basically converts the 3G signal into WiFi.

If you get something called a 'Webcube' made by TIM (which does the same as the router described above) you can run up to 5 wireless devices at once.

We're in Tuscany & covered by a company called Eutalia.

If you put your area into google you should be able to find which broadband company covers it.