Hi,

Boy is this stuff complicated - and I consider myself a power user! :D

I am off to Torino (Italy) for the Olympics in February and am hoping to buy an unlocked GSM Treo 650 and use it there. I was planning on buying a TIM prepaid SIM card in the US before I go, but it is difficult to find out information (especially in English) about whether GPRS services are offered to TIM prepaid customers, and what the pricing is.

Does anyone know if TIM prepaid allows GPRS, what the pricing is, and how you connect to the network?

If TIM prepaid does not offer this, do the other vendors (Wind or Vodafone)?

Thanks for any assistance.

David in Washington DC

Tim has a good internet offer: http://www.cellularitalia.com/news/tim433t...charge05-02.php

25?/month and you can surf unlimited between 5:00 pm- 9.00 am every day and in the weekend 24/24 for a maximum of 9 Giga/month.

Also you can choose Wind "Mega No Limit" option that has a plafond of 1Giga/month for 20 ? month without any limitation about the daytime. You can find a lot of news in other discussion of this forum about this second option :)

David you can find all the information on Italian providers here on PrepaidGSM, all in English, I think it's easier than looking on TIM site in Italian! :)

CLICK HERE

Thanks.

To clarify my question a bit, I'm going to be using a prepaid SIM card (pay-as-you-go) that is specific to Italy (Telecom Italia Mobile)

I am not a T-Mobile customer in the US and do not want to sign any long-term contracts here or in Italy.

I'm trying to figure out what you need to do to get short-term, pay-as-you-go data access when you are a prepaid SIM card customer -- what Italian vendors' SIM cards offer this, what it costs, etc.

The information on the site here is confusing - it's not to me clear whether data services are available on a pay-as-you-go-basis with these SIM cards or whether you have to sign long-term contracts.

Does anybody have any experience with this?

Thanks. :)

http://www.wind.it/it/privati/promozioni/w...mozione3010.php
I think maybe even I can understand some Italian, but in case ...

http://translate.google.com/translate?sour...zione3010%2Ephp

just send a text message to opt in and out, on a monthly pay-as-you-go basis


similar for TIM - opt in on a monthly basis

http://translate.google.com/translate?sour...950%2C00%2Ehtml

I think you didn't notice the name of this site: PrePaidGSM. :D Here we list ONLY prepaid (Pay as you go) offers, so all the info you read on this site is about prepaid plans, no contracts at all.

So what you read on TIM or Wind page is about their prepaid offers; I didn't list any contract offer, we are not interested about them on this site. All the rates you see in the pages I linked you are the ones you pay if yo buy an Italian PAYG sim card.

Talking about data calls there are some prepaid bundles as well, for example with Wind you can get 1GB (in Italy, 200MB in internationsl roaming) of data for EUR 20.00. It's valid for 1 month, then you pay other EUR 20.00 for the following months unless you unsubrscibe. That's not a contract, there are no limitations, it's just a prepaid bundle.

Something similar is available on TIM as well, you pay EUR 25.00 and have 9GB on nights&weekends.

To be honest, what about gt-sim and Mobal then :D? One can say they are prepaids only in case they are "powered" by a debit card with Internet transactions available instead of a credit card. OTOH both gt-sim and Mobal don't force a typical contract similar to those signed to get postpaid plans.

In fact in those 2 particular cases I stated that they are postpaid PAYG offers, but they are the exception of the rule! :D All the "national operators" offers are prepaid only. I often don't write the prepaid offers with monthly fees as well. Anyway, that's not so important on this thread...

Thanks for the information. I am purchasing a prepaid TIM SIM card in the US before I go to Italy, so I assume I will need to go into a TIM shop in order to add the GPRS plan to the account, and they will allow a short-term visitor like me to do this, yes?

It's not a great idea to buy a Tim simcard in the US. I'm sure that you'll pay more than in Italy! :(

Also when you'll have a Tim simcard you can activate any kind of option via 4916 (IVR)... it's important only that you have enoguh credit in your balance. It's easy :)

Pay attention that you'll have "unlimited" navigation ony between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m. with that internet offer of Tim!