Yes the UK has it good. I don't actually think there is any other country where the cost of mobile telephony is as low as in the UK. I really do miss that aspect of living there, but then the weather really sucks! ;)

....and don't forget the dirt cheap international calls available on most of the UK networks or through third party entities!

With vodafone.ie you get 50 MB per day worldwide for 0.99 € - no promotion!

Vodafone.ie faq:

What about roaming and Mobile Internet?

Vodafone Mobile Internet is the same price when roaming abroad as at home. The service will be accessible from any country where we have a 3G or GPRS roaming agreement.

When you top up, you can make calls for 6 months and receive calls for 12 months.

Once you top up, all previous credit (unless it has expired) then becomes valid. After 12 months, your credit expires.
For example, if you go 9 months without topping up and have €5.00 credit left, you won't be able to make calls. But if you then top up by €10.00, all €15.00 of your credit will be available for making calls over the next 6 months.

the only downside is that you need to use the WAP apn (live.vodafone.com) to use this tariff.
Several services wont work on the WAP gateway.

Chris

I'm using it with NOKIA E60 and JoikuSpot parallel on notebook and iPhone. Services which are working:

WWW,HTTPS,RDP,FTP,SFTP,SMTP,POP3,IMAP,SSH,MSN,SKYP E,SIP,openVPN(UDP und TCP)

So you're saying these devices allow you to enter profiles for several carriers? I see that the site you referenced has APNs for TIM, Wind, and Vodafone in Italy. Since it is a 3 branded device, it probably has 3 already in it. That would cover me for any provider I might want to use. I contacted the vendor, and he also thought it wouldn't be a problem.

I'm not sure, but I believe I should also be able to use it with AT&T back here in the states -- it supports 850, 900, 1800, 1900, and 2100MHz -- but their rates are pretty bad. The DataConnect Pass is $15/day (100MB), $30/week (300MB), or $50/month (1GB).

Do you have a pay as you go card, or is it a contract?

Just a little follow-up on this sub-topic. I bought the Huawei E585 MiFi modem, and it appears to work as advertised. To test it out in the USA, I signed on to a T-Mobile plan that is $40 per month for 5GB of data. I did not consider the overpriced AT&T plans. Unfortunately, T-Mobile operates most of its 3G network on a 1700MHz band, which the device does not support. So I'm using it on 2G, and I won't be reaching 5GB any time soon. The good news is that the T-Mobile plan is pro-rated, so that if I suspend service after a week, I pay $10. It is not a prepaid service; they will send out regular bills. But I should be able to stop it and start it at will.

When I get to Italy, I will probably get a 1GB data add-on from TIM for 15 euros. Although VoIP is certainly a possibility there, most of the calling we expect to do will be between my wife and me when we get separated. :) For that, VoIP over the iPhone is not an option, since only one of us will be carrying the MiFi. So we will bring along a couple of GSM phones and get Italian SIM cards when we arrive. I still have credit on my "international" SIM card, but I can't see having my wife call an Estonian cell phone to tell me where she is, and that she just found a great bargain in a shop.

Grampa - I forget what kind of phones you have. When in So. America last month, we made use of BB's free messaging system between any BBerry in the world the couple times we got separated. Guess we could have used the 67 cents/day for unlimited BB email on each phone.

We have iPhones, and then we will also carry little quad-band Motorola 2G phones. Once my wife realized she could get a real phone without worrying about callbacks, there was no turning back.