Andrew
500+ Posts
With the TIM phone service, you could keep your account and phone number if you added money to your account annually, but it could be a problem to do that from outside Italy. I've bought Ricaricards (lately in the form of cash register slips at supermarkets) when in Italy, but it's been tricky to use them to add value from outside Italy.
Previously I'd run into trouble getting it to work on the TIM site www.tim.it ; this time I've gotten it to work on the app on the iPad. It's tricky to find the right place to do the Ricaricard load on the desktop browser.
The big news is that now you can add value using non-Italian credit cards. I don't find it working this way on the app, but on the desktop browser you select Ricarica Subito, then under Dati di Pagamento, check both Carta di Credito and Carta di Credito Estera. It looks like we can do without getting the Ricaricard for the next trip.
One option for people starting a plan is TIM Tourist, which allows setting it up in advance and picking up the SIM card once in Italy.
If you had an online account where you logged in with the phone number and an 8-digit passcode, they ask you to change it to your email as your username, and a strong password.
I have an unlocked iPhone and TIM SIM card, which could work as a hotspot for my wife's phone, but she is still thinking of of getting her own service if she can get her old phone unlocked after a recent upgrade; we're running into complications with that.
In the house that we own, which is vacant most of the time, we have Wi-Fi from a local provider, which comes in from a rooftop antenna, and in some of our visits we've needed to wait for a few days in our short visit to fix a problem. We haven't been billed for the service for a while, but people who've been by the house recently say that it works. If it doesn't work in the future, I wonder about replacing it with a TIM modem such as this. Am I understanding that it picks up a cellular signal and makes data available to nearby devices, no antenna or wired connection needed? We rented something like that from Expresso-Wifi last year, and it might be nice to own one for the house. I generally think of home Wi-Fi offering unlimited data, and it looks like this would have finite data and a plan separate from what we'd have for phones?
If my wife uses her new phone locked to AT&T, keeping it on airplane mode most of the time, we know there's the AT&T International Day Pass for $10 each day she goes off airplane mode. I was puzzled last year when it said "AT&T Wi-Fi" when in airplane mode; my brief searches indicate that, when it says that, calls to the U.S. are free.
Sorry if this was long; there are several things to think about.
Previously I'd run into trouble getting it to work on the TIM site www.tim.it ; this time I've gotten it to work on the app on the iPad. It's tricky to find the right place to do the Ricaricard load on the desktop browser.
The big news is that now you can add value using non-Italian credit cards. I don't find it working this way on the app, but on the desktop browser you select Ricarica Subito, then under Dati di Pagamento, check both Carta di Credito and Carta di Credito Estera. It looks like we can do without getting the Ricaricard for the next trip.
One option for people starting a plan is TIM Tourist, which allows setting it up in advance and picking up the SIM card once in Italy.
If you had an online account where you logged in with the phone number and an 8-digit passcode, they ask you to change it to your email as your username, and a strong password.
I have an unlocked iPhone and TIM SIM card, which could work as a hotspot for my wife's phone, but she is still thinking of of getting her own service if she can get her old phone unlocked after a recent upgrade; we're running into complications with that.
In the house that we own, which is vacant most of the time, we have Wi-Fi from a local provider, which comes in from a rooftop antenna, and in some of our visits we've needed to wait for a few days in our short visit to fix a problem. We haven't been billed for the service for a while, but people who've been by the house recently say that it works. If it doesn't work in the future, I wonder about replacing it with a TIM modem such as this. Am I understanding that it picks up a cellular signal and makes data available to nearby devices, no antenna or wired connection needed? We rented something like that from Expresso-Wifi last year, and it might be nice to own one for the house. I generally think of home Wi-Fi offering unlimited data, and it looks like this would have finite data and a plan separate from what we'd have for phones?
If my wife uses her new phone locked to AT&T, keeping it on airplane mode most of the time, we know there's the AT&T International Day Pass for $10 each day she goes off airplane mode. I was puzzled last year when it said "AT&T Wi-Fi" when in airplane mode; my brief searches indicate that, when it says that, calls to the U.S. are free.
Sorry if this was long; there are several things to think about.