I am traveling to Italy this summer and will be in Tuscany and Venice for one week. My motorola phone will work in Italy, but cingular will charge me $1.29 per minute. I expect to use my phone to call the US a few times a day for short calls.

- Should I buy a SIM card in Italy?

- If so, which card should I buy (and where)? I am flying into Bologna.

- If the coverage is different for TIM/Wind and Von, am I better off paying for the Cingular coverage which I'm told will use the local service with the best reception at any given location?


Thank you in advance for your advice.

DON'T use your Cingular SIM. I would not even put it in the phone while you are there.

The Italians can best advise you on which network is better/best.

Consider a calling card (US or Italian) with a toll free # for calling back to US. Rates will be cheaper than from the cell. Consider giving your friends your cell #. Consider SMS.

Stan

Wind with Dialoga International and you call the US at 0.125?/min directly with your phone. Otherwise there are surely cheaper solutions with callback services and so on.
You'll never get the perfect coverage, but compared to the "typical" US coverage you won't have problems in Italy with any of the 3 operators. Usually TIM is considered to have the most widespread coverage, followed by Voda and Wind, but it can change much from place to place. Since you won't be calling all the time and travelling so much I think Wind can be ok even if it has the weakest coverage compared to the other 2.

Thanks very much. I appreciate your help.

The airport in Bologna has a Voda store, so I will likely buy a SIM there.

Yes, usually Voda have stores in all bigger airports, which is quite a clever idea that TIM and most of all Wind seldom have...