Hi all....I posted before but it's been a while.

I just found out I won a scholarship to study abroad in Sicily and was told that the program will provide a cell phone, but I may go there earlier and do some traveling and would definitely need a cell phone. Also need one for when I am leaving to go back home...just in case something happens.

Has anyone ever used this:

http://www.cellularabroad.com/italyRcell.html

I dunno if the phones they sell are good quality or even if they are unlocked...........I may just look around and try to find unlocked phones but they seem pretty reasonable. I can get family and friends to call me with Gorilla Mobile. Anyway, if y'all have any better suggestions let me know. I thought this company may be good since they claim to use the best service in Italy. why can't there be some uber cheap cell phone that i can get with a US number so people wouldnt have to pay so much to call me on my cell and also why not also include unlimted incoming calls or at least unlimited nights and weekends!!! that woudl be soooo cool if something like that was around....maybe we'll see it in the future.

Hazel,
You'll pay a serious premium when you buy from either Cellular Abroad or Telestial. Much better to wait until you get to Italy and buy a SIM there. You can get a good multi-band unlocked GSM phone from either Ebay, TigerDirect or some other source.

when you buy a sim in italy, how much are you charged for the sim itself? You can just walk into a store and buy one just like that without signing up for anything?

Also, do you have any particular brand models that are world phones? Anything you want to reccomend to me? Are there any decent worldphones that are Nokias? I know they are good wiht reception and I am fed up with Motorola so I am not buying anymore of their phones......

nokia 7270
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/italy.html
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/italia/wind.html

Please buy the unlocked phone on eBay. You can even get the Nokia 6101/6102 (quad-band) locked to tmobile for lesst than $100 at walmart, office max, etc. You can then have it unlocked on the open market, probably for free.

Typically you can find prepaid simcards for 10 euro with 5euro of credit, both Wind and Vodafone, but sometimes you find offers for 5euro with 5euro of credit.
Also TIM works fine but costs more.
Yes you can just walk in and buy one. You have to show an ID document (e.g. passport) for registration.
Nokia world-phones are expensive, I know only the N80 which is quad-band.
Consider that for the same price of 1week rental from Cellularabroad, you can buy a basic dualband gsm900/1800 phone (unlocked).

I really suggest you to buy the simcard here in Italy. In this period Wind costs just 5 euros (including 5 euros of credit), Vodafone 10/5, TIM I think 20/10 or something like that. For Sicily, anyway, TIM has surely the best coverage, probably followed by Wind (Vodafone is usually not great in the extreme south of Italy, but things could have changed in the meanwhile, but I know several Sicilians all happy with Wind).
You can find cheap phones as well, maybe also a dual band 900/1800 if you plan to use it just in Europe, Asia, Africa and Pacific (and Brazil).