We have been advised to consider an internet package with Telecom Italia, as the reception where we live is good. Up until now we have been using dial up which has been very slow when the line is working and non existant when there is problems with the line, which has been most days of late. Despite continually reporting faults to TI the problem has not been fixed. The above mentioned package to be used with a TP-Link wireless router includes 10GB per month at a cost of 25euros, with no instalation costs. Can anyone (maybe Duffer) tell me how this 10MB translates in terms of e-mails, surfing the net, watching TV etc per month etc. Many thanks.

10GB per month is not that much especially if you downloading tv programs. Approx. 7 hours of viewing.

You can get unlimited TI Internet for around €35 per month.

If there is a problem with your telephone line then you are still going to be in the same position as you are currently. I would suggest that you have someone from TI check out your phone line first.

Rereading your post, when you talk about reception, do you mean satelite reception? Maybe we are talking at cross purposes, but 10GB's is really not much.

It seems that TI have no plans to supply ADSL via out land-line. We have been advised to use a dongle that accepts a PAYG SIM card, I hope this makes it clearer Capo Boi. At the moment we cannot afford the instalation costs of a satellite system and we do not have direct line of sight to a Fidoku type system.

As Capo Boi notes, if you are having problems with the line then this will also affect your internet speed, sometimes drastically. Get this checked first. So I will also presume you are talking about a satellite or Wimax via ariel setup otherwise why would you be using dialup??

I would say upto 10GB is for people who generally just surf the internet and send lots of e-mails and download occasionally, some music and/or a couple of films and a watch Youtube now and again.

If you do the above but watch a lot of Youtube, online catchup TV and downloading then it's best to choose an unlimited package without doubt as it normally always works out cheaper. I myself download a lot of high definition stuff which accounts for around 60GB minimum per month. This doesn't take into account surfing, Skype, my Voip line. Also to remember, if you UPLOAD photos for example, this also counts, e.g. to Dropbox or Facebook.

BBC states that 1hr of iPlayer uses between 50 and 225MB of data.
Skype to Skype calls are around 3MB for 1m

Do you watch TV streaming or download it to watch later? Streaming is almost always more economical with the data because of the lower bitrate and increased compression.

Oh I see what you mean. You will be using mobile internet via a dongle on a 3G network.

Just make sure you have a strong signal on the 3G because this will affect the speed as well... I have 3GB a month Webcube for €3 with Tre.it but the signal is too weak at home so I keep the modem at the in-laws.

I wonder what that might be

Channel4 and BBC educational programmes?

Thx Duffer, that is really helpful, will give it a try for a month and see how it goes....I know it is not going to be the best solution to the problem but anything is better than what we use now. We've been unable to watch any uk tv and just use the net for e-mails and surfing the net.
With the 10MB package would we be able to watch any uk tv and listen to uk radio do you think ? Also download an occasional film or e-book ? Probably not !

Yes you can still watch online UKTV, it's still 10GB at the end of the day, just monitor your usage after a typical week for example. With Tre.it, you can check online your data usage so I presume you can do the same with one of the big boys. Remember, that streaming uses less data than downloading. The higher the quality of the programme, the more data it is using, e.g. something in 1080p HD quality is taking up around 3 times as much data than 480p on Youtube.

Again, downloading films is fine if you stick to 1-2 a week but it all depends on the quality. A Divx takes 0.7Gb or 700Mb but the films in HD I download are 3-5GB each. ebooks shouldn't really have an impact because of the small size but films do.

That's better than I thought. OH been and got PAYG sim (paid 20 euros for 20 MB !) plus 10 for the sim....will let you know how it goes. Thx again.

Hi Angeli,
Just to confirm, you will pay 20 Euro per month for a data allowance of 10GB (Gigabytes of data) with a download speed of up to 20Mb (Megabits per second), correct?
Swapping MB, Mb and GB around makes a big difference!!

Hi Duffer,
Apologies for being so Dim!! OH got PAYG TIM SIM with 20GB of data for 25 euro/month, not sure about speed.
Have manage to connect to TP-Link wireless router,but only seem to be able to get onto the websites of the Telegraph, British Expats and our local weather forecast provided by Kataweb, we can't even send email.
Probably a settings problem - any suggestions as to what we should do?
All hints and tips gratefully received.
Angeli

Hmmm... Do the sites you can connect to work OK?
Sounds like a proxy issue to me. Are you using a UK proxy? Try without the proxy to see if everything works and/or try using a different internet browser.
I take it you have already done a virus check?
Also, check if www.speedtest.net is working for you. This will tell you the speed and also tell you which connection you have, i.e. Tim or a proxy.