Which provider / plan to choose for a long-term trip?
 

Ciao

My wife and I are going to travel to Italy, and stay there for 6-12 months. We have to travel back-and-forth between Salerno and Cosenza almost once a week.

We mostly need to talk to each other, but occasionally we may want to call others as well. We also want to make international calls a lot, say 30 minutes every day.

We don't really need any data plan (just rarely, if we get lost and want to check something on the Internet, but hopefully that's not gonna happen a lot ;)).

So, we checked here and there and found providers like TIM, Vodafone, Wind, 3, etc. But we couldn't figure out what provider / plan to choose.

Any help is really appreciated.

Since you plan to make few local calls but many international calls, I'd go for some special option for international calls. Almost all operators have one.
Take a look at their offers here:
PrePaidGSM: Italy

I traveled all over Italy using TIM and had no issues with connections/service. I had been to Capri, Milan, Verona, Roma, Salerno, Casal Velino, Ascea etc.. etc..

I also use their TIMxSMARTPHONE service for 3G which came in handy for $2.50/week. You can setup Skype and call internationally for very cheap. Or use Skype/Skype for free. I'm not sure of the costs with TIM's international calling plan though.

The only thing that concerned me was that this past week, they took $6.70 out of my account with plans that cost $4.50/week. No one at TIM had any idea either. :???:

Other than that, I recommend them.

You cannot use Skype with the TIMxSMARTPHONE option... if you used it for free you were luky. Or maybe it's the reason why they took you some more euros...