Hello everyone, I'm hoping to re-establish a phone line to my holiday home in Italy to get a broadband connection. I've been told though by Telecom Italia that I need to be Italian with Italian ID to do this.
I'm looking for a gardener/woodsperson to try to keep the wood behind/around my house under control - chainsaw work, hedge cutting, general maintenance.
Er that's it really - we're over for a month quite soon - wondering how the makeover looks?It's one of my favourite outdoor pool complexes in the region but it had been getting a bit giu in carrozzeria...(All seems very different in here these day
And now we're back to the old chestnut... Fastweb won't accept foreign credit cards/bank accounts. We ditched our Italian bank account years ago as the costs were so high. We have a Postepay post office account but it's so clumsy - you can't reload it from abroad, you have to physically put notes into the post office cashier's palm when you are in Italy, which for us is not really much use as we are only there two or three times a year.Why is Italy so frustrating?
The TIM online form clearly asks for an Italian ID document. I tweeted them to query and they equally clearly said, no, you can't apply unless you have Italian ID!Last night though I looked on Fastweb's site and their application form has a dropdown box allowing people of different nationalities with their own local Id (e.g., British passport) to input their details.So looks like it'll be Fastweb thanks to Telecom Italia's very odd way of doing things. There's a phone line already into the house, it's just that there's no phone on the end of it (no need for that anyway, just a router).Thank you for your replies!Mike
Not wanting to confuse the issue, but... I have had good experiences using a mobile wifi device (known to the boffins as mi-fi). It's basically a portable router which gives you a wi-fi standard connection wherever you are. The key difference compared to a chiavetta is that up to five devices can access the web at the same time. So you can be in one room on a smartphone while the children/partner are on the laptop in another. At Easter we rented one from tepwireless.com. They post it out to you before your trip, you post it back on your return. Had it in my pocket wandering round Rome - with wi-fi access to Google Maps on my iPhone. You can pay either for 100mb/day cumulative (ie unused data gets rolled onto the next days) or opt for unlimited which costs more. Two good things about this are 1) They are offering 30% off for summer bookings made before May 15 and 2) ifyou enter "tep 40" in the discount box you get another 40% off on top. It's another option if you didn't want to get into buying/recharging ItalianSIMs yourself. I think I may end up buying an unlocked mifi unit like the Huawei 586 then sticking an Italian data sim into it. Anyone else used Mifi in Europe/Italy? Mike
... did he charge if I may ask for removing the three trees? This is exactly the sort of thing we need doing... our trees however are threatening the road just below!
Just to let you know that a few days back I bought an Italian USB dongle from the Euronics shop in Castelnuovo for internet coverage. It's a Vodafone and the reception in Bagni di Lucca is excellent. Cost was a one-off 29 euro for the dongle and 19 euro for 3 gb, which lasts for a month (or you top it up if you run out earlier). You can pay less for less download capacity or more for more. Not exactly a steal, but for the convenience of web access from our house halfway up a mountainside it's a price worth paying.
Very useful. I already have a 3 dongle in the UK. It would seem this would be locked to the UK so I can't just take it over and slip in a Vodafone Italian SIM. Seems I will have to buy both a dongle and SIM in Italy.Mike
Flip, thanks for your patience on this. So you can use a British-bought dongle in Italy, it's enough just to change the SIM to one bought in Italy? Finally - how do you usually top up? Do you do it online via your phone's own browser, or do you go back to the shop in person? Mike
Hello Flip Thanks for this, very useful. How did you go about getting a Vodafone dongle? Did you buy one in person locally, if so from where? Also, what about this business of wiping your credit every month - a pain if you're only in the country for a few weeks at a time? What's Vodafone's policy on that? Thank you Mike
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And now we're back to the old chestnut... Fastweb won't accept foreign credit cards/bank accounts. We ditched our Italian bank account years ago as the costs were so high. We have a Postepay post office account but it's so clumsy - you can't reload it from abroad, you have to physically put notes into the post office cashier's palm when you are in Italy, which for us is not really much use as we are only there two or three times a year.Why is Italy so frustrating?
The TIM online form clearly asks for an Italian ID document. I tweeted them to query and they equally clearly said, no, you can't apply unless you have Italian ID!Last night though I looked on Fastweb's site and their application form has a dropdown box allowing people of different nationalities with their own local Id (e.g., British passport) to input their details.So looks like it'll be Fastweb thanks to Telecom Italia's very odd way of doing things. There's a phone line already into the house, it's just that there's no phone on the end of it (no need for that anyway, just a router).Thank you for your replies!Mike
Not wanting to confuse the issue, but... I have had good experiences using a mobile wifi device (known to the boffins as mi-fi). It's basically a portable router which gives you a wi-fi standard connection wherever you are. The key difference compared to a chiavetta is that up to five devices can access the web at the same time. So you can be in one room on a smartphone while the children/partner are on the laptop in another. At Easter we rented one from tepwireless.com. They post it out to you before your trip, you post it back on your return. Had it in my pocket wandering round Rome - with wi-fi access to Google Maps on my iPhone. You can pay either for 100mb/day cumulative (ie unused data gets rolled onto the next days) or opt for unlimited which costs more. Two good things about this are 1) They are offering 30% off for summer bookings made before May 15 and 2) ifyou enter "tep 40" in the discount box you get another 40% off on top. It's another option if you didn't want to get into buying/recharging ItalianSIMs yourself. I think I may end up buying an unlocked mifi unit like the Huawei 586 then sticking an Italian data sim into it. Anyone else used Mifi in Europe/Italy? Mike
... did he charge if I may ask for removing the three trees? This is exactly the sort of thing we need doing... our trees however are threatening the road just below!
Thank you Jane, we'll call him. Mike
As good an analysis of the rise and rise of "social media" over the past two decades as I've read anywhere.
Just to let you know that a few days back I bought an Italian USB dongle from the Euronics shop in Castelnuovo for internet coverage. It's a Vodafone and the reception in Bagni di Lucca is excellent. Cost was a one-off 29 euro for the dongle and 19 euro for 3 gb, which lasts for a month (or you top it up if you run out earlier). You can pay less for less download capacity or more for more. Not exactly a steal, but for the convenience of web access from our house halfway up a mountainside it's a price worth paying.
Very useful. I already have a 3 dongle in the UK. It would seem this would be locked to the UK so I can't just take it over and slip in a Vodafone Italian SIM. Seems I will have to buy both a dongle and SIM in Italy.Mike
Flip, thanks for your patience on this. So you can use a British-bought dongle in Italy, it's enough just to change the SIM to one bought in Italy? Finally - how do you usually top up? Do you do it online via your phone's own browser, or do you go back to the shop in person? Mike
Hello Flip Thanks for this, very useful. How did you go about getting a Vodafone dongle? Did you buy one in person locally, if so from where? Also, what about this business of wiping your credit every month - a pain if you're only in the country for a few weeks at a time? What's Vodafone's policy on that? Thank you Mike