My husband and I are from the US and have AT&T, but their abroad add-on plans are really overpriced. We will be needing access to data/internet to navigate and find restaurants, and ideally, phone service to call and confirm reservations or restaurant/store hours. We will be in Italy for 10 days in early May, then London/Paris/Barcelona for 10 days in mid-June. Would it be worth it to get a T Mobile Simple Choice plan for just those 2 months? The 1GB/mo plan is $50/mo and the 3GB/mo is $60/mo (but if we get the 3GB/mo option, we get an extra 10GB of LTE data for free before speeds go down to 2G). I'm guessing that if we choose the $60/3GB option, the total will come out to $70/mo after fees. We have some sort of cash back deal with our bank, so we'd get $75 back... so in total we'd probably pay around $65 for 2 months of service and 3GB/mo + 10GB free. Trying to see if this is worth it, so my questions are:
- Has anyone used T Mobile in Italy? How is the service/reception in Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, and (especially) Cinque Terre? Is the internet usable for navigation and looking stuff up or is it too slow?
- Is there a cheaper method of getting a reasonable amount of data + ability to make phone calls? I looked at portable wifi options and they seem to be ~$50 for 7-10 days (including shipping of the device), which would be $100 total for us since we would have to get it for both trips separately. I also don't know of these things would work in areas like Cinque Terre.
Any advice is appreciated! Thank you!