Wireless on Sicily - When Choice is the Rescue

In an earlier post , I reported on how I am using my 3 UK SIM card in 3's Italian network for Internet access without roaming charges. This works well in the bigger cities such as Catania, Siracusa, etc. In smaller cities on the countryside, however, coverage is a mess. Often, there are at least three GSM networks and usually also some UMTS network while outdoors. But once inside somewhere, most networks just fade away. Or even worse, your mobile shows average coverage but as soon as you try to do something, the coverage indication goes away... In my apartment for example, there is complete radio silence except for 3's UMTS network at the window. At another place where I stay sometimes, only TIM has reasonable coverage. It almost looks like in those smaller towns they just dropped a couple of base stations and never did any proper radio planning and interference analysis. So since SIM cards are cheap and Internet access to be had for a couple of Euros, I now have a SIM card for 3, one from TIM and another one from WIND. At least one works in any place. Not ideal, but pragmatic...

Comments

[Dan Iordanescu]

Martin,
Are you using a PCMCIA datacard to connect to Internet in all locations where you go? Which one is it?
At the moment I roam in Italy, Austria, Switzerland and France but use Internet on the laptop in Italy only using a UMTS prepaid SIM from TIM and my 3G phone, Nokia E61. It's messy, I need to get a data card. From what you know, do mobile operators in the other countries have prepaid UMTS service as well? Would you be able to tell me which ones?
Thanks-a-lot,
Dan.