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Rent a WiFi hotspot ("MiFi") in Italy (25 days in Feb/March 2023)?

Posted by (Iowa) on

Hi -- we'll be traveling in Italy (11 days in Sicily, total of 26 days in Italy) and flying in and out of Rome. Last time we were in Europe (France 2019), we just got a SIM card for my iPhone and that worked fine at a more reasonable price than adding Verizon international service, but we were only there for about 15 days. My daughter spent about 14 days in Portugal last summer, and she found an easy pickup (combination dropbox/locker) and mail-back system for a very reasonable price and worked very well.

We're not finding anything for nearly the decent rate (60-75 Euro?) that they got. We don't stream video or watch much on phones, so minimums of 0.5 GB/1GB a day before throttling would be no problem. Is this just not as much of a thing in Italy yet, or is it just more expensive? Most of what I've seen was $10-$12+/day -- is that just the going rate right now? This is mostly for backup and checking in with family in the U.S. We might do some quick searches here and there (and probably some map use, etc.), but usually the 2-3GB of data we share lasts us the whole month!

Has anyone done this in Italy? Would it be better to buy one (some come with data), as we hope to be traveling more in the next few years? We're happy to just use WhatsApp and email, if it's more economical than including local mobile phone service/texts. Our first 11 days will be on Rick Steves tour of Sicily, so it's possible that we could be very minimal/no coverage there, and hope that we get into enough hotel WiFi to quickly update family, etc.

Thanks so much for any recent experiences and your advice. This is one of the best forums around:)

-Kristi

Posted by
4922 posts

Is your phone unlocked? If so and you don’t need the ability to make phone calls other than through WhatsApp, have you looked at Airalo for an eSim? Lots of cheap data, you can get it set up before you leave, and you can hotspot other devices to your phone. They have plans that will last 30 days and it’s easy to top up if you need to.

Posted by
3812 posts

It seems you are describing expensive stuff for tourists by international companies.

Why don't you get a local sim, pay in cash the 1st month and throw it away when it's time to fly home? I pay 9.99 a month for unlimited minutes of talking time, unlimited texts and 120 gigas of data. Plus some minutes, texts and gigas in the EU.

I doubt any mifi could offer you more and it would be cheaper even if you had to add 10 € for the SIM activation on top of the monthly fee.

Posted by
491 posts

Can't speak specifically to Sicily (and we are going there in March/April), but generally in our travels I have used Verizon TravelPass, which is $10/day to access my "home" plan. The trick here is to not use it every day, and I don't. I have found that the hotel wifi, and various free wifi at museums and cafes meets my needs. For example, this fall we were in Greece and Croatia for 20 days, I used cellular for maybe 3 or 4 of them, to navigate while not on tour. I felt that was worth the $30-40.

That said, if I was on my own (no tour) for 20 or more days, or if I needed to be available throughout the day for US communication, etc., I would likely look into the SIM card options, or go with Verizon's international plan, which I believe is $100/month.

Posted by
16157 posts

If you have an unlocked phone go to a TIM store or Vodafone store in Rome and buy a local SIM card. If Verizon has locked your phone because you haven’t finished paying for the phone then you need to pay it off and have it unlocked or buy a different cheap phone. There are several local plans to choose from and the sales clerk should be able to find the best deal for you depending on you needs. The SIM card itself costs 10€ but the plans range from 10€ to 20€ for a whole month. With some plans making phone calls and texting to an American number may deplete quickly your credit, which you then have to replenish with another recharge to replenish your credit (minimum recharge is €5 euro) but you can avoid that by using WhatsApp (or Skype or any VoIP platform) for calls and texts to other countries.

Posted by
3812 posts

This should cover off ALL of the OP's messaging needs:

"Message with TIM on WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, imo, Telegram, Viber, Snapchat and WeChat.

Did I imply that iMessage's "send as SMS" option is an answer to anyone's needs?

It's just a silly option that Apple keeps turned on by default because they think texting must be free all over the world like it is in the US. Background texting to US based servers would block Tim's sim for tourists in a couple of minutes.

Posted by
417 posts

If you have a newer phone you can get an eSIM, and then you don't have to worry about going anywhere to buy one, swapping out cards or so on.

Posted by
20 posts

Thanks for all of the advice. It does, indeed, look like a SIM/eSIM would be cheapest solution -- just that a regular SIM makes me nervous having to keep track of my original SIM for almost a month of travel. I'm hoping the eSIM will work for one of us. My husband's Google Pixel 6a (unlocked), and my iPhone is unlocked and fairly new SE (2020 model, purchased in early 2022). It's just been really nice to have data on the go for previous trips, for GPS if we get lost, or when exploring other train options when the expected one will be 4 hours late.) However, I didn't realize that the Verizon monthly International plan was pretty reasonable at $100, at least for one of our phones. (Though maybe not as reasonable as a SIM/eSIM. I'll need to check further as to whether an eSIM will work, solving the problem of not losing the original SIM card during 26 days of travel.)

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