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My cell phone will not work in Rome, what are people's experience with calling cards or some sort of temporary cell phone usage over there?
Where is your cell phone from? If you would put the country where you live on your Home Page here on Virtual Tourist, we could give you some specific help. Since your English is so good, I'm going to bet you are from the USA and so is your cell phone. It won't work in Rome because they broadcast on different frequencies. If you have an unlocked 3G or 4G cell phone, you can go to any cell phone store in Rome and buy a SIM card. Safely store the one in your phone and replace it with the new SIM card. You will have to purchase minutes (we use a prepaid plan) and then your phone will work just fine. We use the Orange network in Europe although there are quite a few networks. Good luck. Hope you get it worked out. If it won't work, get a cheap European cell phone with a prepaid plan and just save the phone for future trips.
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I bought a calling card in Venice - the guy in the shop said it would work in any kiosk. Well, it didnt - and any jabbering instructions that the automatic operator was telling me was in Italian so I didn't understand! If you buy such a card, make sure there are some decent instructions as to how to dial home! Mine included a series of numbers BEFORE the home number but whether you had to leave-off digits or add more I have no idea. In the end we found the phone boxes to be quite reasonable for short calls - in my case Italy to UK.
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Hi, I was using prepaid SIM card from TIM while in Italy in April 2012. They have TIM International which is made for tourist to Italy. I bought it in Naples, and the guy at TIM outlet was very helpful, and he can speak English. TIM offer the cheaper rate for BlackBerry which is 2,5 e/week. But in TIM International they give free internet for a month. I was still using TIM when I left Italy to France, and their rate still cheap even though I was in different country. I hope this info will help you. :)
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I have purchased an unlocked phone for @50 (amazon, ebay etc. all sell them) and take it with me wherever I travel. European countries use 900/ 1800 frequencies and any cheap phone will work with a @$20 sim card. Incoming calls are always free and outgoing can be 1/2 to 1/3 the price of using your own phone. Sim cards are available anywhere and you can add minutes easily. Usually I buy the sim card at the airport or you can go online and have one sent to you before you go (much more expensive).
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