Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband

There are very helpful detailed posts on this topic already so worth a serach. These are by people who really seem to know the full ins and outs.I'm sure things have moved on, but the best I achieved when I went through this process at a town in southern Le Marche six months ago was getting a small external modem that plugged into USB port via a short lead. This was branded as 'Alice' and with it I buy month long PAYG top ups from TIM.This works for me as I am in Italy sporadically and wanted to avoid a fixed monthly charge.Critical first test is to use the network selection facility on your mobile in the location you will use it most to see which carrier has the most bars of signal. This should strongly influence your choice as signal we have at our house is very variable even with strongest carrier.

I know that both of the above do.  I now have contract Vodafone but started off with pay-as-you-go as wanted to make sure signal etc was good.  I believe you get 5 hours per day for €25/month (one option).  I have a friend with TIM so know that is also possible but not sure of available deals.  Would strongly recommend you check which gives you best signal as I can't get TIM and my friend couldn't get Vodafone! 

Thanks both for your comments. I'll do a further search. My initial search didn't seem particularly fruitfull, hence the post. Its the no contract PAYG options that I'm interested in. Anyway, top tip to check carrier coverage. I'll check each network first before I take this any further.Ian

This is TIM's current offer:   http://www.tim.it/consumer/c56088/i56299/livello2standard.doYou would probably be better off buying a SIM-free modem, for example from http://www.nucleusnetworks.co.uk/3g-usb-modem/3g-usb-modem.htm - the initial purchase price may look higher than one with a contract from a mobile service, but you would then only need to buy a card  for the actual times you are in Italy rather than being tied in to a yearly contract.Note that there is a much wider range of cards 'solo navigazione' on the TIM site above than initially appears on your screen - scroll horizontally using the blue arrows/bar at the bottom of the page to find the rest.  The ones that work in gigabytes rather than hours are better value if you are downloading small amounts of data such as email, streaming radio and normal browsing rather than watching YouTube!

Hi I posted a while ago on this as I very successfully used my mobile phone as the modem for my laptop half way up a mountain in Abruzzo this summer for only 1 euro a day when I logged on (up to 500MB). This was with Vodafone. When I looked three weeks ago before going out to Italy again, it had gone up to 4 or 5 euros which I think more or less takes it to UK prices. But at least you don't have to buy a dongle (or internet key, as they call them) which are a lot more expensive in Italy - though I think IWIND currently has a deal on. Hope you get sortedSalutoni  

Many thanks for all your advice.