Landing at Rome Fiumicino Airport (Leonardo da Vinci)

What FCO is like

Fiumicino is where most people meet Italy for the first time, whether they are staying in Rome or connecting onward to Sicily and the southern islands. Arriving from outside Europe you walk a long way, because passport control sits before the baggage halls rather than after them. In high summer that queue can run for the better part of an hour. That wait is exactly why people want the phone working while they are still standing in it, not after they reach the exit doors.

On arrival

Turn the line on as the aircraft lands and you are still in the airbridge corridor, and an Italian network name usually appears before you reach the desks. The walk from the gates to passport control is long and broken up by moving walkways, so if you need to switch a line over, do it in your seat or while you wait at the belt rather than at the point where you are trying to order a car. Past the baggage hall the exit doors open into a central concourse with signs for the railway station. Follow the airport's own signage from there, because the connections between the terminals and the station get rearranged from time to time.

How far the airport Wi-Fi gets you

The free airport Wi-Fi covers the main halls, but it puts a registration page in front of you first, and that page sometimes wants an email address or a verification step you cannot complete while you are offline. Coverage thins noticeably once you go down to the station level under the terminal, which is precisely where you are buying a ticket and reading a platform number. It is also a shared network at the busiest hour of an airport that handles a lot of long-haul traffic, so speeds swing. With a mobile line already running you skip the sign-in page and the basement dead patch without thinking about either.

Getting into town

The most direct way in is the express train from the station beneath the airport to Roma Termini, which takes about half an hour, with a slower regional service that stops more often as the cheaper alternative. On the ride the signal dips in places as the line crosses open country, then fills back in once you are inside the city proper. A taxi or a booked car will always take longer than the train at rush hour, however tempting the door-to-door part sounds. The whole leg is light on data, roughly 100 to 200MB for maps, a digital ticket and a message to your host. What it needs is to be online continuously rather than in bursts, because the ticket barrier and the map both want you connected at the moment you are moving.

What people ask about this airport

• Switch on before the queue — The passport queue in summer can eat an hour. With the line already live you can warn whoever is meeting you, or push back a booked car, while you are still standing in it.
• The station level is thin — The rail level sits under the terminal and runs weaker than the halls above. Load your ticket and your route while you are still upstairs in arrivals.
• Italy is rarely one stop — Most people who land in Rome carry on to Florence or Naples by train. A plan that covers Europe as a region keeps working across those legs without anything to set up again at each city.