SIM card and phone plan for visiting Italy for three weeks

Both Vodafone and Tim sell plans for tourists that last for 30 days.

Tim: https://www.tim.it/tim-tourist-en This plan costs 20 €, but you must pay 10 € for the SIM card.

Vodafone's: http://www.vodafone.it/portal/Privati/Tariffe-e-Prodotti/Tariffe/Estero/Vodafone-Holiday-English

Pick the offer you prefer, but to avoid problems you must understand what's included and what isn't.

As an example, if you choose TIM's plan for tourists you can't send texts to anyone, they are not included. It seems easy, but you must also prevent your iPhone from doing it in background (it happens, believe me). More, You can receive as many texts as you want, but if your phone is set to send a receipt confirmation to the sender... that's an outgoing text! Soon your credit will be lower than zero and your SIm will be blocked. To be fair, Tim sends warning texts when customers are running out of credit this way, unfortunately they are in Italian.

As a side note, You'd better ask the salespeople to turn all VAS services off when you buy an Italian sim. You don't need them .

If you're only calling home, I suggest using an app - like Skype, Facetime or What's App. The only hitch is that you need a Wi-Fi signal to do it. But those are REALLY easy to find - in virtually every hotel, restaurant, bar, cafe, or even stores. You call home for free. You don't have to mess with a SIM card. You don't pay extra to your service provider. And you can set it all up long before you leave home - so you and your loved one are comfortable with how it works.

What's App enables texting or calling - so you can share photos with your loved one at home while you're on the road. Facetime and Skype allow you to see each other while you talk. And it's all done over that miracle we call the Internet.

Major carriers (in the US) like Sprint and TMobile make it really easy to take your own phone to Europe, and thereby avoid enormous fees, and the hassles of getting and telling loved ones about your new European SIM card or burner phone. You also get to use all of your own apps -- like navigation, social media, and entertainment -- along with downloads of Rick Steves' audio tours with ease.

Sprint only charges $.25 per minute to make and receive calls. Texting and (slower) data are free. TMobile has a similar plan, and from what Americans traveling in Italy told me it's even better than Sprint's. With multiple trips to Europe I can attest to the fact that our phone costs increase only nominally while we're there. And we've never seen the inside of a phone store while we're traveling.

I see a lot of discussions in the forum about phone calling from and within European countries because of the excess(ive) fees that companies charge, and it astounds me. The charges seem criminal to me - especially when the charges are levied by companies on their own good customers. Almost as astounding is how hard we travelers work to get around those excessive charges.

We bought a sim card from TIM and it worked well for us for data - we never used it for calling within Italy. We were away 26 days in April/May and used the data for maps/browsing all the time and did not use all the gigs we got. The card cost us E30 in one store, and when we got one for my husband's phone, it was E20 for some unknown reason. He barely used it but it was good if we were doing different things and wanted to meet up. And then we weren't afraid Rogers was going to charge us a ridiculous amount if he used it.

For voice, we used WhatsApp to talk to my Mom in Victoria daily. She installed it before we left and we tested it out. It also allowed video calls and pictures to be sent, which was great.

if you go with TIM you can't send texts to anyone

To clarify that, with TIM you can send texts but they cost €.20 each. The Tim Tourist card includes 200 minutes of talk in Italy and internationally. Since I don’t text much but constantly use data, this card is the one I buy. International phone calls are as clear as a bell.

If you are using WhatsApp to call your Mum; she, or whoever you ate calling with it, needs to have it installed on a mobile phone as well.
With Skype, you can just phone her.
However, it sounds like you need to call Italian numbers, so best to get a sim card there, as well as using WiFi.

Daily calls home can be easily scheduled on either What’s App or Skype. Emails will go through whenever you have WIFI. You can get a “Handy” burner phone too for calls/texts (20 E) if necessary. If Mom has a crisis the cost of any of this will seem minor. If it is to make everyone more comfortable having regular check in’s is the best you can do. The 9 hour time difference will be the hurdle but a pre-dinner call should catch everyone at breakfast, or a breakfast call will catch folks just before bed.

cynthia,

The easiest and least problematic solution would be to simply use the Fido roaming package, although it is a bit pricey. The Fido plan seems to be much the same as my Rogers Roam Like Home plan and if you need to be contacted from home, that's the best option. I have to be reachable from home for several reasons and after trying different options over the years, I've found the best solution is just to pay for the roaming plan.

While you could certainly buy a local SIM, you'll have to make sure you keep the "bucket of minutes" topped up. That will be a more complicated solution if your mother has to call you, as she would then have to dial an international long distance number.

While $180 is expensive, in the overall cost of a European holiday I don't find it to be a problem.

The tourist SIM cards from TIM and Vodafone both include some calling minutes to countries like Canada. The Vodafone Holiday SIM comes with 300 minutes. If you will use more than that in three weeks for calls to actual phones (if elderly mother doesn't want to learn use WhatsApp or something), I agree with the suggestion above just to use Skype to call her (use the SIM's minutes first). Skype costs a few cents a minute to call phone numbers and works on either WiFi or with mobile data. You have to add credit in blocks (maybe $10 at a block) but then calls are only a few cents a minute. You can also just buy a month of unlimited calling - $6.99/month right now to North American countries.

https://prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Italy

https://www.skype.com/en/calling-rates/Canada#