Prepaid in Sardinia and Southern Italy

[mingelli]

I think TIM would be the best option for coverage (3G and edge). One question how do you VOIP on the iPad since it has no microphone. Can you use a bluetooth earphone with mic and use a SIP software on iPad? I am looking to ruun VOIP on Ipad but coud not find yet a BT earphone.

Originally Posted by Grampa

I have read the very helpful pieces here and in Effendi's guide (PrePaidGSM: Prepaid Data in Italy). I have some questions specific to Sardinia.

1. I'll be traveling to Sardinia beginning next week. I have only about an hour layover in Rome, so the my best opportunity to purchase a SIM card will probably be at Cagliari airport. Anybody know what network operators are represented there, and where they are located?

2. The coverage links above are a little hard to use. I will be driving throughout Sardinia, and particularly in the countryside outside of any cities and towns. Do any network operators stand out for especially good coverage, or especially bad?

This is only for data. I'm planning to use a MiFi device with a couple of iPhones and an iPad (no computer), mostly for browsing, map downloads, and perhaps some VoIP. I think 1GB ought to be plenty of data for two weeks in Sardinia and a week in Rome. I need 3G, but coverage is more important than speed. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Grampa]

Originally Posted by mingelli

I think TIM would be the best option for coverage (3G and edge). One question how do you VOIP on the iPad since it has no microphone. Can you use a bluetooth earphone with mic and use a SIP software on iPad? I am looking to ruun VOIP on Ipad but coud not find yet a BT earphone.

But the iPad has a microphone input, correct? It also has a stereo headphone jack, I believe. I don't know whether the mic input and the headphone input are combined. If so, couldn't you use a wired headphone/mic like the one that comes with the iPhone? I don't have an iPad, so I'm just speculating.

The only problem with TIM is that they don't have a data-billed plan, just a time-billed plan. Given that the iPhone accesses the internet frequently and each time counts as 15 minutes, I might go through the time allotment pretty quickly.

[mingelli]

If you want to use the TIM sim in your iphone there is the option TIMx Smartphone at 2 euro a week, but if you intend to use the MiFi to connect multiple devices you have to use a time offer like Internet x40 or x 100 ore at 9euro or 19 euro a month.

[Grampa]

I'm here in Sardinia, and the cards work great. I bought two basic TIM cards for my 2G phones and a 100 hour TIM card for the mifi device. We have two iPhones and an iPad. I have made several VoIP calls, which worked well even over 2G. These were calls to 800 numbers in the US, which can only be made from within the US (my VoIP provider is US based).

My only problem is that I can't get TIM's email-to-SMS gateway to work. I've tried 0n@timnet.com and n@timnet.com. Neither can be delivered. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?