Global pocket wifi/ data

Hi Peter. For data, both the Europe and the US now use LTE with fall-backs to 3G (which is really usable in my experience). 2G "Edge" GSM data networks are very slow and difficult to use today, with any phone.

These pocket WiFi devices are simple to use and should be reliable - but they could be a lot more expensive and/or more complicated than simply using your phone.

Question is: what kind of phone do you have now? (Exact make/model?) Who is your provider? If your phone is capable of connecting to Euroepan LTE networks, you should get fast roaming data without much issue.

I have a Samsung 8S, Carrier is T-Mobile which is GSM, like Europe.. I do have unlimited international data and text. I will call them to see if it is 4 G LTE capable. I know the pocket Wi-Fi s work on 4G.

When roaming with T-Mobile in Europe, your phone will connect to the fastest mobile network available - LTE if your phone is capable. But then data is "throttled" (slowed down) to 2G speeds. This usually works OK for most people, I think, but it is occasionally frustrating. You can buy a "data pass" from T-Mobile to go faster if you need to, but I'd suggest you try the phone as-is first of all. I personally wouldn't bother with a "pocket WiFi" when you already have unlimited data. You'll use WiFi at hotels. WiFi seems pretty good nowadays at hotels. On my trip to Italy this month, WiFi worked great pretty much everywhere for me, even at some cheap hotels and B&Bs.

Surely your Samsung is LTE-capable in the US, but it may or may not have the LTE bands (frequencies) used in Italy. I'd guess it probably is.

(Even Verizon CDMA smart phones can roam on GSM + LTE in Europe nowadays FYI.)

Thanks, but are you saying that even if I connect to the fastest roaming 4G LTE networks available, they will be throttled back to 2G speeds of data? I have many apps, hotel reservations, train bar codes, train & tour tickets on my phone. I'm hoping not to be standing there waiting for a download while trying to show anybody the info!

Peter, I don't think the 2G speed will be that slow. I used my phone with T-Mobile in Europe (Baltics + St. Petersburg) in 2016. It was an LTE phone, and it was fine. Occasionally it would slow down.

Doesn't matter if you have one app or a hundred apps. You can use only one app at a time. And that's the one that will be downloading stuff - sometimes. Most apps really don't use much data - I highly doubt you'll have to wait that long.. Don't try to stream videos on T-Mobile 2G data. Skype or WhatsApp video may not work. I made some audio calls using 2G data (Google Hangouts) - worked fine. Try to download stuff (install new apps, etc.) while on WiFi.

If you find the 2G data is just too slow? You have a few options. 1) Buy a "data pass" from T-Mobile for a week or whatever you need. Or 2) buy a local SIM card for your phone. This means your phone must be unlocked (find that out and get an unlock code from T-Mobile before leaving for Europe) and that you won't be able to use your US phone number for calls and texts while the T-Mobile SIM card is out.

Buying a data pass for faster data is probably cheaper and easier than getting a "pocket WiFI." But I'm guessing you won't need one.

https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/roaming

Peter,

If you have unlimited global data GSM and Wi-Fi now, I'm not sure why you'd want to pay extra for "pocket Wi-Fi" as that device will be accessing the same towers as your mobile phone. Both your phone and the pocket Wi-Fi should be equally "reliable". It seems like a waste of money to me but your choice.

Peter you’re lucky that you are a T-Mobile subscriber — it seems to be the best and easiest and cheapest option these days for folks heading to europe from the states. Technology has advanced since your last visit and as Andrew said, you really should be ok for just about everything except video streaming/intense gaming. As Ken notes, you’re really not in a position to need to buy a mobile WiFi hotspot.

I have a different perspective on this topic based on my recent experience. We traveled to Rome, the Val d’Orcia region, and Florence last fall. My husband needed wifi to work every night, and his work requires a similar signal strength and speed to streaming Netflix. Every night it was a (stressful and anxiety-laced) adventure to see how hard it was going to be for him to do his work. And everywhere we went, the Italians we spoke with told us that good, consistent internet access is a big problem in Italy compared to other European countries. We encountered different problems in different areas, with both signal strength and speed: In Florence, the heavy walls of the hotel made their hotel wifi and his phone hotspot signal very weak. In the Tuscan countryside, we couldn’t get a signal and the agritourismo’s wifi was non-existent in the rain and very slow in good conditions. In Tuscany, our Hertz mobile hotspot ended up being an absolute lifesaver. Even in our two Rome hotels, it was a hassle. We have T-Mobile and my husband has a newer Samsung phone, and he wasn’t able to get the signal and speed he needed with that. Maybe your needs aren't as extreme as my husband's but, if a strong and fast connection is essential to you, I do think you’re smart to plan ahead, have a pocket wifi as back-up, and be prepared to experiment with your phone, hotspot, and hotel wifi to see what will work best in the moment. Good luck!

Betsy, we all have different needs. I have no idea if Peter, like your husband, requires a fast internet signal pretty much everywhere he goes, most of the time. Most vacationers to Italy do not - they need a phone for map navigation, checking email, checking hotel reservations, and making the occasional phone call. For most travelers, T-Mobile's 2G roaming is going to work just fine, even if it's not blazing fast.

My internet solution over the last several trips would have worked great for your husband. I have a Dutch Vodafone SIM I've used for the last several trips to Europe (I don't have T-Mobile anymore at home and my current US mobile carrier does not have a good roaming plan). I use it in my Android phone, and I use it all the time as a hotspot for my laptop. I've used it on trains, buses, airports, etc. It's been very reliable, and because my current phone has all of the European LTE bands, I get fast connections consistently. Occasionally I've used it at hotels when the WiFi wasn't good, but I've found on my last several trips that the hotel WiFi worked fine.

My phone as a hotspot worked as well as any "pocket WiFi" device that does the same thing but would have cost so much more. Had I had T-Mobile, I could have simply paid for data passes instead to get fast internet when needed - it just would have cost quite a lot more than my Dutch Vodafone SIM but probably roamed on Vodafone's network, anyway. I don't need much data when I travel (2GB for 9 euros, good for a month, was plenty for my recent eleven day trip), but I could have gotten a much larger bundle of data that would have been plenty.

Had I needed to steam video constantly and use a ton of data? Then maybe a "Pocket WiFI" unit would have made more sense, assuming it had unlimited data. Really depends how much data I would have used. But for the average traveler, they don't really make much sense.

Well, thank you all very much for your advice. A few notes, I do not plan on streaming or downloading any videos or other type of needed high speed connections. T-Mobile, I believe and I will trust it works, so I will go that way without getting a pocket Wi-Fi. I will check with T-Mobile about the date pass. I guess one of the things that made me a little weary was, last year at this time we were on an Alaskan cruise. When we got off in the towns, wifi never worked, and data was so hard to come in. And that was with my current S8 with T-Mobile! Thank you again Andrew, I will take your advice.

I just spent the month of April in Italy with the same TMobile plan and a OnePlus 6T phone. I used it for all of the same things you wish to - tickets, maps/directions, etc. and it was wonderful and having that access was a huge asset on my trip. My phone said I had 4G coverage most of the time, but I don't think the speed matched 4G speeds at home - I was sometimes waiting quite awhile for an article to open, for example, or my Instagram feed to load. But I reserved my casual web browsing mostly to wifi in restaurants or my AirBnBs or hotels, which was all excellent (and in some cases better than my home wifi! a separate issue, I suppose). I certainly had 2G or 3G coverage at times, and some spots of no service in extremely small towns or catacombs. You should be more than ok, and as Andrew said, you can always buy a data pass if you need more.

Regarding Alaska - I had the same issues you did in ports. TMobile is wonderful, but it has limited coverage in rural parts of the US so that's likely the issue you ran into. My service in Italy was much better than my service in Alaska (I was there last September so fairly recently).

One other point to mention regarding roaming in Europe, based on my own experiences.

When roaming on an international roaming plan with my home network, I've noticed that the phone tends to favour one network in each country. However I've found that in areas where the "preferred" network didn't have a strong signal strength, I was able to manually switch to another (stronger) network. That's an advantage when roaming with my home cell provider rather than buying a SIM when arriving in Europe, as locally purchased SIM's will only be able to use their own towers.

Whether this same situation would affect pocket Wi-Fi hotspots will depend on the agreement between the hotspot providers and each local cell network. Some hotspots may seek be able to seek out the strongest signal in each area.

One other thing I've noticed is that in some areas, texts can not be sent or received until cellular data is switched "on". I often leave data switched "off" when I'm away from Wi-Fi areas to avoid exceeding my roaming data allotment.

Thanks for all the advice, everything should be fine. I checked with AT&T, Italy does have 4G capability for downloading or if not 3G. I asked about the data pass, they said I actually shouldn't need it but I could always pick it up once I'm over there . Technical sites indicate the phones will show 4G but you're not actually getting that, it's the LTE pathway that is capable of it. I do have unlimited data, so I will always be leaving it on so data and Wi-Fi can work together. Now I have to figure out or ask T-Mobile how to stop any incoming calls with roaming on, because that I will be charged for. I know I can make Wi-Fi calls but I'll have to check that out.

P.S. in reply to my data not working in Alaska, I forgot I had data turned off and no roaming. But T-Mobile did say Wi-Fi is very limited there.

Just as an FYI, we have iPhone 8P's on Sprint with free Global Roaming - free texts, calls at $0.20 a minute and free 2G data with the option of updating to 4G/LTE for $25 for the week

Used it in Prague last September and then in Rome this past March and didn't need to upgrade - 2G was perfectly serviceable as we didn't stream any videos and my wife mainly used it for social media. It uploaded pictures without a hitch

Thanks Herfnerd. I have the same plan and phone and its good to hear it worked well for you at 2G. I wasn't planning on the upgrade until I was there and able to see if it was needed.

I had Sprint in Portugal last year. It was a little slow. I switched to my Dutch Vodafone SIM for the ten day trip because I could get 2GB of fast data for 10 euros. If it had cost a lot more than that, I would have survived with the Sprint 2G data speeds.

(Sprint has pretty much exactly the same international roaming plan as T-Mobile: free texting, 25 cents/min calls, and unlimited 2G data with the ability to buy "data passes" I think for faster data.)

I've used T-Mobile for the past several summers when I go over to Europe for about a month at a time. I have found the throttling to 2G speeds to be very frustrating most of the time. Sometimes I've been lucky and have been able to find another carrier other than the one that my phone automatically selected that has worked better, but other times I've just been stuck with whatever I could manage to get. I'm considering getting the Global Pass package for this trip, which gives you 15GB of 4G LTE data, as opposed to being throttled to 2G. I have had several T-Mobile employees in stores and agents on their customer service line assure me that I won't even notice a difference with 2G speeds, but when you're standing in a city waiting for a map to load on your phone so you can see where you're going, it can be a real pain.

I have had a positive experience with WiTourist in Italy last September. I decided not to go the SIM card route and put my phone into airplane mode with WiFi on using WiTourist’s unlimited data plan. It was expensive, but all five people in my group were able to connect to it at the same time. Worked very well around N. Italy and was definitely faster than any hotel or b&b WiFi. Probably not a route you need to go, but anyone else looking for pocket WiFi in Italy should think about it. Easy to order online and pickup at the airport in Milan and simple to return when I left.
Pros:
Worked everywhere even in small towns
Small, the size of a deck of cards
Fast. Can’t tell you how fast, but I did stream some things and was satisfied overall with the speed
Works with multiple connections. I think they claim up to ten devices connected at once. Five sure worked well. Got to be good for families using multiple devices.
Cons:
Battery life. Bring a backup battery to recharge the unit. Not a big deal, just another thing to charge
Expensive. I think I spent $75 total on the rental. Good option for a two plus week trip, but I wouldn’t spend that on a shorter trip or if I was on my own.
Works in Italy only. Finding a European Pocket WiFi that works in multiple countries for a two week period could cost twice as much.
Jeff

Just today, T-Mobile introduced some new data pass options:

https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/06/04/t-mobile-rolls-out-new-international-data-pass-options/

Now you can get 15GB of LTE data good for 30 days for $50 - a lot cheaper for a long trip than Verizon's $10/day would be. Or $35 for 5GB/10 days. (Or $5/day for 512MB - was already an option.)

FYI...I just talked to T-Mobile yesterday, there 1 day (24hr) for $5 is 2Gb.

Thanks, but I've already made the decision not to use a pocket Wi-Fi. T-Mobile plan for international is just as good and will download at the same speed as the pocket Wi-Fi, when you can get that connection. No one's downloading at 4 or 5 G that's a misnomer.

Well, depends where you are exactly going. But for Italy the rates I believe are £3 for a minute call and £7 for a megabyte of internet. I found very useful info here when I was searching for a solutions about your problem. And thanks to the EU data roaming is now in the past.