Month in Italy Novice
 

Traveling for a month in Italy with family, planning to buy 2 cheep Motorola V190 quad band phones. New to GSM sim cards. Most calling will not be between our two cells, but to other numbers. Reading threads and looking at links on prepaid GSM, the Wind super senza scatto seems like might be best, followed by TIM Unica new Tim planet. But there are some threads suggesting that coverage for WIND may be less good than TIM. Is WIND a problem in more rural areas like Cinque Terre, or Tuscany? I gather that it is easy to pick up these SIM cards at the airport. Are they easy to find in smaller towns? Airport sounds like a problem because it sounds like you need a codice fiscal to do that and those are available only in town and we are heading to the country. If you want to get one ahead of time in the States, what does the prepaid gsm.net page mean when it says in its instructions "you shouldn't have any problem to buy a prepaid card now, and if you have, it's not your fault, but it's some Italian dealer that cannot do his/her job well! And it happens..." Who is the Italian dealer?:confused:

First suggestion: buy it in Italy, not on eBay.
I don't know where you are landing, but I think there are no Wind shops at any airport in Italy, so if you want to buy a Wind card, you won't buy it there. You need the "codice fiscale" at any shop you want to buy it, but it's really not a problem to get one, just follow the istructions on that page you already know.

I live close to the Cinque Terre and I use Wind. There are some (very small) places along the walking paths between the 5 small towns that are with no coverage, Wind, Tim or Vodafone it doesn't change, the coverage is not 100% with any of the 3, but it's overall good for all three operators. So go with Wind and you won't have problems, also I think you don't need to be with coverage at 100% of your time.

I'm in a similar situation to Maggie. I'm thinking of going with Unomobile, since their instructions and even their website are in English: http://www.unomobile.it/en/index.htm

How common is Unomobile? Can I buy a Unomobile card at the airport (Florence or Pisa)?

Grazie! Flying to Peretola, heading directly to small town south west of Firenze. What sorts of places do sell WIND cards?

UnoMobile is available only at Carrefour and DìPerDì supermarkets. It's true that the website is in English and istructions too, but I guess it's quite hard to find an English speaking cash accountant at a supermarket... I'd go with the "traditional" operators, but you can give it a try, the requirements are the same as any other operator, i.e. codice fiscale and passport, but usually people at supermakets are more used to sell vegetables rather than simcards.... :p

tell us the name of the town you are going... we can check the shops list on the website, and also AndreA, my "colleague" here, is from Florence, so he can surely help you more.

Effendi is right. Anyway Unomobile roams with Vodafone