Digital nomads consider internet a base need. In this article, we show you the best tariffs for Southern Europe in terms of value for money.
We value especially 3 things regarding mobile data: LTE, prepaid data plan and a big data volume. We used the following mobile operators:
LTE data plan in Italy – TIM
(November 2018)
TIM (Telekom Italy) offers many GB for little money. But the plans are intransparent. First, we had to get a contract “base e chat”, which does not require a monthly fee. To get the card and activate it, we had to pay 20€. Then, we could charge the card. We paid 10€ to get 10 GB. Via the customer loyalty program “TIM Party” we could activate another 10 GB for free. Both are valid for 30 days. In the end we paid 30€ for 20 GB of LTE data (= 1.50 €/GB).
LTE data plan in Portugal – NOS
(February 2019)
NOS has an unbeatable offer – “Kanguru XL“: 15 days internet for 15€ (resp. 20 days for 20€ // 25 days for 25€ // 30 days for 30€). That means for 1€ per day we get unlimited! LTE data. We just had to pay 3€ for the SIM card once (= 1.10€/day)
LTE data plan in Spain – Vodafone
(January 2019)
Vodafone has the best rate in Spain. It is called “YU Mega Yuser“: 10.5 GB for 20€. You get this volume only with the campaign “Triple your data volume” because usually the plan “YU Mega Yuser” includes only 3.5 GB. The data volume is valid for 28 days (= 1.90€/GB).
Summary
You get quite some value for your money in Southern Europe. Additionally, we can confirm that the prejudice holds true that at least the Southern European countries have a much better network coverage than Germany. Even at the most remote beach we still had a LTE connection; while we do have already issues with 3G in medium sized German cities.
Our hardware
We use the SIM cards with our LTE Router Netgear Nighthawk M1, that provides us with Wifi in our motorhome.
Our fallback
If we need to get internet urgently and don’t have a local SIM card yet or local data plans are too expensive, we have an Europe Prepaid Data SIM Card from Transatel. It costs 59€ for 10 GB. The data volume can be used across Europe and is valid for 30 days (= 5.90€/GB).
Update 07.10.2019: As of now the Data SIM Card for Europe only exists in a 3 GB version.