Mobile Internet in Tunisia

Tunisia’s telecommunications network is definitely still developing — there’s still no 3G, although a French operator has recently acquired the contract to make it happen. The best Tunisia can offer presently is EDGE, but there’s good news: Tunisia’s first private telco, Tunisiana, offers a freaking awesome prepaid mobile Internet package: 9 Gb per month, for 27 TD (about €14). Continue reading »

Mobile Broadband in Italy

In Italy, unlike in France, there appears to be no problem with getting a SIM card as a foreigner. You will need your passport or some other form of ID, which will be photocopied, but other than that, it’s very easy.

Wind have the most competitive prepaid mobile broadband, by a long shot.

Wind

We are with Wind in Italy, and they have been fantastic right from the start. We went into a shop in Rome, just a bit south of the Flaminio metro station (on Via del Corso), and they spoke English there. The guy who served me was very helpful, didn’t throw a tantrum when I admitted I had an iPhone and wanted to use tethering, and even gave me the APN in advance!

Mobile broadband is available on just a standard pre-paid SIM card, which costs €5, from memory, and is just an option that can be activated in store when you buy the SIM, or later for a small activation fee.

There are a number of mobile broadband options, which are metered either by time, or by volume. The time-based plans are much more affordable, and offer truly unlimited data (no cap at all). We’re using the ‘Mega 100 Ore’ plan (100 hours) at €15 per month, which works out to a bit over 3 hours per day.

Once the 100 hours are up, you pay €0.50 per 15 minutes, which is not so good. Our plan is to buy another SIM card with the same plan, so we get double the time, and can just switch SIM cards when we use up the first 100 hours.

The alternative, volume-based plans are a bit more expensive, with the most generous being 4.5Gb for €30/month. Given the rate at which we go through data, this isn’t much use to us.

As far as quality goes, we’ve had the best 3G performance I’ve ever seen – Currently, in Sorrento, I’m getting 100kBps downloads, smooth video conferencing and very nicely streaming Megavideo. Haven’t had any problems with range so far.

Update: Since our re-entry into Italy, we’ve been using the 4.5Gb plan (“Mega 15000″) on one SIM card which I keep in my iPhone, and the 100 hour (“Mega 100 ore”) plan on a secondary SIM card I keep in a USB modem we have. This way, we have untimed internet for casual use, and for heavy downloading (catching up on TV!) we can plug in the USB modem. This has worked very well so far — surprisingly, we’re currently well below our data allowance on the 4.5Gb plan, despite using it for hours and hours from our laptops almost every day, which is great. What’s even cooler for us currently is Wind have a special offer on their volume-based plan that gets us completely unmetered internet between midnight and 8AM.

Notes on other providers from my assistant Louise:

TIM

This appears to be the closest I can get to your data requirements at 1 Gb. Since it is only valid 30 days I don’t know if it is possible to top up mid month. Pricing is a bit confusing but it appears to be 10 euros per card BUT they talk about pre-pay you get 50 mb and then when that used up in a 24 hour period they load up 1 gb.

Vodafone

This is interesting – 39 Euros a month, gives you 10 hours surfing etc. per day, after that charge you 2 Euros per hour. There is note in the T&C that says if you go over 10 Gbs then they will get upset.

Trouble is of course it’s contract but can’t see commitment length, and appreciate you almost certainly don’t want their mini PC.

Local broadband countries