5. August 2017

Mobile Data via Wind in Italy

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Newest success, July 2021

For tourists resident outside of Italy, perhaps also for locals?, see https://www.windtre.it/offerte-internet-mobile/summer-card-200-giga/ (italian). Foreign ID card or passport required (or not?). The offer is called «Summer Card 200». I found no english version. Click «Attiva» to continue buying the card online. You’ll come to a «checkout». Forget the «codice fiscale», the italian tax number, if a foreigner.

I walked into my local Wind shop, found a friendly clerk (“teller”), showed my ID and asked for the special tarif for tourists.
   I got 200 GB within 2 months for € 20. I had to pay another € 15 for the new sim card and its activation. It worked within an hour. Tethering is no problem, naturally.

Good information on transmitters in South Tyrol you get from http://www.silbernagl.biz/Mobilfunk/MobilfunkauswahlSuedtirol.php#def%3B0%3B1270545.008169%3B5880687.941677%3B9 .

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Old: October 2019. Look at this offer.
   40 GB a month and 250 minutes of calls to certain countries for 10 Euro:
https://www.wind.it/privati/mobile/wind-estero/dallitalia/ricaricabile/call-your-country-super-easy-pay/?prov=HPW-ril2


Just for foreigners proving that by italian tax number («codice fiscale») – who knows more?
   Countries: Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Brasile, Belgio, Bulgaria, Canada, Cina, Cipro, Colombia, Croazia, Danimarca, Finlandia, Francia, Germania, Giappone, Gran Bretagna, Grecia, Guam, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Islanda, Israele, Irlanda, Lituania, Lussemburgo, Malesia, Malta, Messico, Mongolia, Norvegia, Olanda, Pakistan, Perù, Polonia, Portogallo, Puerto Rico, Repubblica Ceca, Romania, San Marino, Singapore, Slovacchia, Spagna, Stati Uniti, Svezia, Sud Korea, Ungheria. 
   With app “MyWind” control in English or Italian. 
   Here’s how to calculate your fiscal code: https://calcolocodicefiscale.altervista.org/ – and where you get the document. Perhaps Wind in their shops accepts a passport or foreign id card?
————————————————————————

When I was back in South Tyrol I tried my mobile Wind connection. To my astonishment: it worked.
I saw three unread SMS – that I couldn’t have seen in Germany, as the Wind SIM card stays in Italy.
The messages had tried to tell me about the deduction of 5 Cent for my internet contract, for 5 Euro credit due to my payment, and that they were trying to reach me – what they then did via an e-mail.
1. Wind does not take into account that with a mobile router onsite you can’r read SMSs offsite, and that reading SMSs is much more difficult than in a phone.
2. Wind likes five cents fo no apparent reason. Do they connect copper coins?
   The open amount of data was still there:
3. Wind shows the amount of data left only when you click (ask for) detagli!Their web site for ‘‘private” clients www.Wind.It/PRIVATI is a mess of advertizing and no information for the user.
So that’s how I update this blog entry – via Wind, via mobile Internet … on a remote farm.
——— older:
End of summer 2019, end of August, end of Wind, I’m afraid. – Wind managed to get me into a debt of 7 Eurocent. No indication is available to explain this. My number is a prepaid number – so how can I go negative? In any case my 85% of the paid 20 GB were blocked – without information. I thougt the transmitte was down. No, apparently it was just another of Wind’s foul tricks. No internet.
When I hit the small red i at -0,07 I now got to see some smallprint:
Il credito sulla SIM non è sufficiente in seguito all’attivazione di un optional o al rinnovo dell’offerta. Per assicurarti la continuità del servizio, il traffico incluso nella tua offerta non è stato bloccato, ma è a tua disposizione per 48 ore dal 5/8/19 al 6/8/19 al costo di 0,99 euro. Il costo non si applica se attivi il servizio Autoricarica. Ricorda di ricaricare per continuare ad utilizzare la tua offerta. –
   Practically telling me that I “had not been blocked”, and I could use the rest of the data “at costs of 99 cent”, within 48 hours from August 5 to 6 – of course long past. I had practically been deprived of my paid data! Later I recharded € 5. You can only recharge 5, 10, 1525, 50 or 100 Euro: Here’s the result:

See my new credit of € 3,89. Apparently Wind had taken € 0,07 (my original “debt”) plus another € 0,99 from my recharged € 5. Wind’s calculator wound up with a credit of  € 3,89. Five cents missing. Well, that seems to be Italy …  So:

If you aren’t prepaded to suffer, shy away from Wind!
   Incidentally a registered paper letter to Wind triggered the response from cusomer service, (Servizio_Clienti_Wind-Infostrada [Servizio_Clienti_Wind-Infostrada@155.it]) with subject Codice Cliente N°P1044139379.

Gentile FRITZ JOERN, 
 

In riferimento alla sua segnalazione n°1200315717 del 27/08/2019, le confermiamo che, avendo espletato le verifiche necessarie, la stessa non può essere accolta.

Per ogni altra informazione può consultare il nostro sito internet www.wind.it o contattare il nostro Servizio Clienti, sempre a sua disposizione, al numero 155.

Cordiali saluti.

Servizio Clienti Wind


indicating that my “signalisation” could not be “picked up”, “hearty greetings”; i.e. go to hell…

————————————————————— 

Summer 2019 – After having paid in 10 Euro (online, Paypal), I got (the contracted) 20 GByte running right away. A week later I was down to a few percent prematurely.

So I sent an SMS to 4155 SALDO. Here’s the answer:

Dati: hai ancora a disposizione il 3% di 20 GIGA da utilizzare in Italia 
e il 100% di 3,7 GIGA da utilizzare in Roaming UE. 
Prossimo rinnovo il 16/08/2019. 
(Data: You still have 3% of 20 GByte to use in Italy, 
and 100% of 3.7 GByte to use in roaming mode in the European Union.)
   I recharged another 10 Euro (online, with my remaining 3% of broad band) and sent an SMS to
4033 INTERNET RESTART SI.
   The renewed service started immediately. Note the 3.7 GByte for use in the EU!

 
16. April 2019 – New Contract!
   Wind had unilaterally canceled my contract, and not even the decency to tell me. When I paid in € 15 they did not go towards my volume contract, but were immediatelely consumed by just a few megabytes of ad-hoc-data. 15 Euro thrown away, because of Wind!
   Now Luigi A. of Wind shop Bolzano (Johann-Wolfgang-von-Goethe-Straße 44) had me pay in at a bar € 20 for the new tariff and its activation. I now have a contract for
20 Gigabyte Internet for a month for € 10
No turning off, no turning on of the service, no SMS control. Just pay ten Euro to your mobile Wind number, and it starts. Don’t pay, if you don’t want to continue. If you used more than 20 GByte and need more within the month, just pay in another ten Euro, that’s what Luigi told me.
   You can pay, recharge, pre-pay (whatever you call it) at a tabacchaio (selling cigartetts and other monopoly stuff like salt, sale e tabacchi, Tabak-Trafik, usually newspapers and cheching gum as well. You can pay via Internet, your bank, a bancomat automatic teller machine (ATM), with Paypal and many oher ways; You just need the phone number to pay in like 3246121902
   To login from anywhere on the Internet go to Wind.It, click PRIVATI on top right, ENTRA top right (if not logged in yet). As user name enter the mobile phone number like 3246121902, and password. When logged in go to AREA CLIENTI. To check remaining data volume click visualizza dettagli at bottom to open the details. (You can also check via SMS to 4155, Text just DATI)

     

I went to Bolzano’s Wind office and waited an hour for my turn, only to hear that I had no contract. Wind had just stolen my money, by using it for the astronomic fees with non-contract access.
   Here’s the proceedings, as seen by SMS.

2019-04-15 21:16:04 4033:
Grazie per la richiesta. Entro 48 ore un SMS ti confermera' l'avvenuto rinnovo della tua offerta internet
   This was in response to my activation to 4033 INTERNET RESTART SI. Previouly I had paid in € 15. The confirmation “of the re-activation of my internet offer” never came.

2019-04-16 06:45:04 Wind:
Saldo alle 06:45 del 16/04/2019
Piano Tariffario:  Wind1
Credito Residuo: 0,00 Euro
Scadenza Sim: 13/05/2020     
Opzioni attive: Sconto SMS My Wind

Here comes Wind’s SMS monologue following my debaute at the shop this morning:
2019-04-16 11:07:45 WINDTRE INTERNET
   20 GIGA e' attiva. A 9.99 euro al mese hai 20 Giga e ##VAR56 Giga dedicati al Roaming UE

2019-04-16 11:42:26 WIND
   La ricarica da te effettuata è andata a buon fine. Come richiesto, ti abbiamo accreditato 20 euro. Per verificare il credito disponibile digita *123# invio.

2019-04-16 12:01:50 WINDTRE
   Ti abbiamo addebitato 5.00 euro per il costo di attivazione di INTERNET  20 GIGA.
2019-04-16 12:01:51 WINDTRE   
  Ti abbiamo addebitato 9.99 euro per il costo di INTERNET  20 GIGA. Verifica i bonus disponibili inclusi nella tua offerta dall'App MyWind, nell'Area Clienti di Wind.it o inviando un SMS al 4155 con testo DATI

–––––––––––––––––––– THIS MAKES THE REST HERE OBSOLTETE …

PS. 2019. When the SMS commands SALDO and DATI won’t trigger replies, Wind has kicked you out of your volume contract, and your (probably fresh) credit is rapidly eaten up by costly ad-hoc Internet usage. Call 155 on a fixed line or with the Wind Sim card (for free) to get human help from Wind (in Albania …). I now have a new, even better volume contract with € 10 for 20 GByte monthly (€ 5 to start, reimbursed).

INTERNET 20 GIGA e' attiva.
   Ogni mese hai Internet Illimitato con 20 Giga Full Speed a 9.99 euro, salvo eventuali promozioni attive.
Their best offer today, Feb. 21, 2019, would be 30 GByte for ten Euro, see above or go to Wind.It.

Wind is one of the three or four providers in Italy for mobile phone and data. On my farm in South Tyrol it’s the best choice for data, according to experience and a local site showing the transmitters. So I decided for a prepaid Sim card by Wind, from the local electronic store. (The name Wind probably was derived from a former name, Weather Investments.)

Here you see my old mobile router (white box) with USB charger always plugged in. My Wind Simcard is in there. Newer routers should have LTE as well. (2G GPRS is practically unusable, insist on at least 3G, i.e. HSUPA, or super fast 4 G LTE.)
   As I am in Italy only sporadically, I turn my Simcard data service on and off (important!) as needed. I take the lowest portion offered per month, 5 Gigabyte for 9 Euro, but now have switched to 20 GByte at 15 Euro/months.
   If my Gigabytes are used up prematurely, the speed falls back to the old analog phone modem speed; the service is not totally cut!  That’s still ok for e-mail and browsing with patience, see http://blogabissl.blogspot.com/2017/07/datenvolumen-minimieren.html (in German).
   To avoid regular automatic continuation of the service and debiting while I’m absent, i.e. to stop ongoing monthly deductions of 9 Euro, I pause the subscription before I leave; very important, by sending a SMS to 4033 with 3GB NO .
My new black mobile router with LTE,
model Huawei E5577Cs-321 Mobile WiFi,
hung by invisible plastic fishing line
[
Bilder\201808Thinkpad\Router (2).JPG]
 You communicate with Wind via SMS from the data Sim card in the router. That’s free of charge and direct. For some commands it’s the only way.  
   If you have the Sim card in a mobile phone, short messaging is easy. In my case the card is in a mobile router, so I have to locally log into the control page of this router with my browser: the pre-set local IP address of my mini router is http://192.168.0.1/ with login just by “admin” as key. The new Huawei router is at http://192.168.8.1/html/home.html, accessible with “admin” as well, but followed by a password, “MFritz3”. (If you don’t know the internal IP address, a so called NAT address of the router: It’s normally printed on there; or use an IP scanner.) I run the mobile router and its Wi-Fi hotspot on my lonely mountain farm without any encryption, for ease of use.
   The SMS commands to Wind (either to 4033 or to 4155), free of charge, must be in capital letters and precisely as given: 

                                                     SMS    to        text  
Reactivate service when you come:       4033   5GB SI 
Pause service before you leave Italy:  4033   INTERNET NO  or
                                                                4033   5GB NO
Restart the new period prematurely:      4033   INTERNET RESTART SI  or
                                                                4033   GIGA RESTART SI or
                                                                4033   RESTART 5 GIGA SI
Question status of data and charge:       4155    SALDO
Question data status:                              4155    DATI

Please watch the prompt reply SMSs by Wind, in case of “SALDO” sometimes even two of them. 
   You get a SMS message when you have less than 20 percent of fast data left (but you probably won’t see it, as the router is no phone. So actively look for SMS ever so often, or check DATA). And: delete SMSs in the mobile router, as it can hold only a small number of SMSs on the card. 
   Actual restart may take up to two days, Wind says (« Grazie per la richiesta. Entro 48 ore un SMS ti confermerà l’avvenuto rinnovo della tua offerta internet »), but usually is nearly immediate.
   A short recapitulation of the restart process:
1. Make sure via SALDO that you have enough credit on the card to restart your service (and don’t fall into the negative saldo trap). Let someone else load your card or a cafè, tabacchaio or other shop, if you don’t manage to reload (« ricarica ») yourself.
2. Check your credit again.
3. Only then restart via SMS or Internet.
   If you can’t send SMSs and you get (after some waiting time) “message could not be sent, try again later” as in the screenshot at left, then you probably have exhausted your credit on the card. With an empty prepay card you cannot phone nor send any SMSs, not even to free of charge service numbers. Very disturbing. So recharge your Win Sim card either at your local cafè or via Internet.  
   Why Wind uses two different service numbers, only (the) wind will know …

The other way to control (and recharge!) your account is via Internet at
http://www.wind.it/it/privati/. I found no English or German dialogue there, sorry. You log in with the mobile phone number of your Sim card as the user name, in one number block, like 3246121902, and a password established during registration earlier. To recharge only, you need not log in at all. The recharging mechanism is general purpose to recharge any prepay card.
   Via Internet you can then check your data state (« visualizza dettagli », look at details):
In this case I had 98% of my 5 GB left. The next period would start on August 30, 2016. This corresponds to the DATI question via SMS.
   I can also look online at my “financial status” with Wind:
In this case I had a credit of Euro 23,24, the tariff was Wind 2, today I run Wind 1. (Never let your credit become a debit; in this case you won’t even be able to send an SMS!). This corresponds to the SALDO command via SMS.
   Clicking on RICARICA (recharge) I can add credit, and pay for example with Paypal or a credit card. This is less nice but more convenient than buying credit at the next newsstand or local bar.
Summer 2018. My data is now on
https://www.wind.it/nuovaAreaClienti/wind/pages/home.action – seems to be a “new”, nuova, client area. Responses generally are very slow, some internal links don’t work at all (like to “Wind 1” to learn more about my option).
   The screenshot is from « la tua Offerta », your offer, which gives my status: In this case my credit is 15,26 €, I get 5 Gigabyte per month, 99 % are still available, next period starts end of July.
   If you run out of fast data and want to restart prematurely the next period you may do so in Area Clienti in « la tua Offerta » cliccando sul tasto Restart

PS. If nothing else helps, and you must call a human for help, use the Wind Sim card in a phone and dial 155. Don’t try to call the 155 from another number; that’s supposed to work, but doesn’t. 
   If you want to send SMSs from your Wind card to other mobile numbers, always use the country prefix, e.g. +39… for Italy. The same is true, if you send a SMS from your usual mobile phone in Italy. Good luck!

   – On some rainy Saturday evenings I fell out of the net again and again in a couple of minutes. Turning the router off and on helped. 

When the DNS disappears
   On Sept. 19, 2017, some of my usual addresses could not be reached any more, they even didn’t ping any more. So I suspected an error with the Domain Name Service DNS, the table (hierarchy) that makes an IP number from a given IP name. My Windows 7 acknowledged this error when trying to “repair” my Internet connection. 

So I looked into my mobile router and found – under WAN “Mobile Broadband” (wide area network, the mobile over the air service) – that the DNS line was empty, connection and connection method both set to Automatic, see above. That’s how it normally works. The DNS address is not shown locally, the network apparently knows it internally. But as the DNS mechanism actually didn’t work
   I manually changed to the setting to Manual (as shown in the screenshot below) and entered 212.245.255.2 as DNS server, hit ok, and all connections miraculously worked again!
Note that the DNS mechanism works with a hierarchy of tables buffering (caching) the information. The lowest level of DNS is within your PC, so some of your recently addressed IP addresses (names) will still work, even if higher DNS tables are not accessible.   

Wind offerings (in English – in Greece?):
 https://www.wind.gr/en/for-individual/wind-mobile-broadband/

Permalink to here: http://j.mp/2I4x1q6 =
https://blogabissl.blogspot.com/2017/08/mobile-data-via-wind-in-italy.html

Vedi anche https://www.aranzulla.it/come-disattivare-opzioni-wind-947128.html

Keywords: Prepaid Data Sim Italy, Sim card purchase in Italy, Buying a Sim card in Italy, Internet access in Italy, Local Italian Sim card, Roaming in Italy, Prepaid Data Sim in Italy, Prepaid Internet in Italy, mobile hotspot … 

https://www.mondomobileweb.it/65712-wind-dal-24-aprile-2017-nuove-offerte-ricaricabili-internet-con-servizio-restart/

1 Kommentar:

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