Italy voice/data recommendation? am on information overload!

[Ken Bane]

Good Morning. First time poster, apologies in advance for anything where an apology would be warranted...

I'm traveling to Italy next month, 12 days, Rome, Florence, Cinque Terra. Will have my laptop and two jailbroken iphones (mine and my wife's).

I'm wondering what the best data/voice strategy is, given my short stay and use needs. Overall, I want to make infrequent in-country and home-country (USA) calls as well as use our iphones for email, web-browsing, etc. and use my laptop for normal business use, without paying exorbitant rates. BTW, our phones have Skype (which with the jailbreak can be used on both Edge/GPRS and 3G as well as wifi) so this can offload some of demand...

I'm comfortable with using hotel internet access and/or local hotspots, though it might be cool to have a unified solution where I could use my iPhone as a wireless modem... (am pretty sure I can get an jailbroken app to do that...) And, I'm comfortable with having Italian #s while we're there...

Overall, I think I should be comparing my local provider's (AT&T) international roaming and data plans: AT&T International | Wireless from AT&T, formerly Cingular

with the in-country offers at PrePaidGSM: Italy

it seems that WIND is the best deal PrePaidGSM: Wind (Italy)

but there are SOOOO many options there - I'm totally on information overload and could use some guidance...

given my needs, what WIND plan(s) should I choose? And, do I have an option to get the #s before I leave, so I can share with family who might need to reach me in an emergency?

Thanks in advance!

Ken

[Effendi]

Hi Ken,
I suggest you to buy the simcard in Italy, all other ways are not very reliable.
Wind could be a good solution, with 3G coverage in Rome, Florence and La Spezia (close to the Cinque Terre) and 2G coverage at the Cinque Terre (where no operator has perfect coverage, by the way), unless they already upgraded to 3G there too.

For surfing the net you can choose one of the data options such as Mega 1500, Mega No Limit or Mega 15000. It all depends on the amount of data you plan to use.

Vodafone Italia has an i-phone add-on for EUR 3/week offering 500MB of data per week:
http://www.areaprivati.vodafone.it/1...ack_per_iPhone

It's quite a good offer and Vodafone has wider 3G coverage than Wind. But if you have an old 2G iphone it's nothing better than Wind (which has EDGE in some places).

[Effendi]

Hi Ken,
I suggest you to buy the simcard in Italy, all other ways are not very reliable.
Wind could be a good solution, with 3G coverage in Rome, Florence and La Spezia (close to the Cinque Terre) and 2G coverage at the Cinque Terre (where no operator has perfect coverage, by the way), unless they already upgraded to 3G there too.

For surfing the net you can choose one of the data options such as Mega 1500, Mega No Limit or Mega 15000. It all depends on the amount of data you plan to use.

Vodafone Italia has an i-phone add-on for EUR 3/week offering 500MB of data per week:
http://www.areaprivati.vodafone.it/1...ack_per_iPhone

It's quite a good offer and Vodafone has wider 3G coverage than Wind. But if you have an old 2G iphone it's nothing better than Wind (which has EDGE in some places).