Using A Mobile Phone In Italy

I’m a long time Apple buyer/user, but I did not get my first iPhone until spring this year. It’s also my first smart phone and I’m enjoying it quite a bit, especially for shooting movies. And doing web searches during conversations to prove people wrong, er, that is, provide clarity.

Since my wife, Kay, and I had planned (yet another) trip to Italy this past September, it was time to try the new iPhone overseas. Seemed simple enough – people do it all the time! In the past we had used an inexpensive “international phone” on several trips and it worked ok. It was purchased online ($110) from a British company and included a fair amount of credit toward calls and texts.

I was hoping for a more robust experience with my shiny new toy -- not only making calls, but also web surfing and research, sending photos, navigating the rental car, Skyping the grandkids – essentially the freedom to do everything I can do here at home. With some research I quickly found that it’s rather difficult to get the exact info you need, what with so many carriers, countries and phone types. Still, I soon realized that unless I was willing to pay $10+ per megabyte for data, I needed wifi to do the fancy stuff. (One MB of data is enough for maybe 100 text-only emails but using it to navigate a one day car trip would cost about $50!)

In a nutshell, here’s why: you need a new SIM card (plus a prepaid data allowance) from the country you are in to use the higher-level features of your smartphone for a reasonable

price. In my case, the new SIM would have made my iPhone Italian! Cool, but the process is too complicated and geeky to detail here. See link below...
Modern cell phones have a SIM card slot, right.

Ultimately, I found that it made more sense to just use the phone as a phone, at least on this trip. We use Verizon and the deal with them is to add “international dialing” to your account (no extra charge). With this plan, you keep your US phone number and can use the phone as soon as you get off the plane. It feels like no change at all! But, calls and texts are not exactly cheap. For $5 you can add the “Global Voice Value Plan” which reduces calls to $.99 per minute (from $1.29) and texts are $.50 to send and free to receive. This is a little cheaper per use than our original international phone ($1.25 calls, $.80 send text) but you don’t want to use it to call home and talk for an hour. I’m sure AT&T has a similar deal.

The iPhone worked quite well! In south central Italy, we were to meet US friends to attend a wedding in the countryside and a few texts took care of it. While in Sorrento, we got a 1:00am (Italy time) panic call from our daughter who was home watering the

garden when the water heater sprung a leak and was spewing water in the
garage. She even sent a photo! With a combination of texting and talking (and help from her fire fighter husband) we got things turned off - to be dealt with on our return home! Two weeks later in Venice, we were to stay for a few days with our English friend, Keith Rogers (retired video producer with ATCS) as well as Tom Griffith and his wife, Nancy. We easily made text contact with Keith on his British iPhone 4. However, Tom opted to go the inter-national phone route and we had trouble connecting. He ended up not using it for most of his trip.

For a much more detailed “how to,” see this article from travel writer, Rick Steves:
http://www.ricksteves.com/plan/tips/cell-phone-europe.htm

How will my iPhone work in India this coming February? Stay tuned…

By Sam Parsons

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