Since I will only be in Italy two weeks and do not travel that much I think renting a phone is less expensive--am I right? Can I rent at the Florence airport and return to the Venice airport?

Thank you.

It might be cheaper to buy...
I bought a T-Mobile phone in
Amsterdam this summer for 29
Euros and it included 15 Euros
worth of airtime. So the cost
of the phone was only 14 euros.

The rental deals I checked before
leaving weren't that cheap.

Rob

You may already have a mobile phone that will work in Italy...if you are from the USA and have a gsm carrier (AT&T or T Mobile USA and several smaller companies but most assuredly not Verizon)...check to see if you have European frequencies and if not, you may be due for a free or very cheap upgrade. If so, request the unlocking code and then when you arrive in Italy, you will find you can buy Italian prepaid service for €10 with €5 worth of credit.

In this day and age, renting a mobile phone for Europe is almost throwing money away.

Sorry for hopping on the thread but I have a similar question. If I get a TMobile phone with the appropriate frequency, I will pay 99c per minute in the UK. Could I instead buy a sim card in UK with minutes to avoid that roaming charge? You seem knowledgable and no customer service rep has been!

UK sim cards (prepaid) are among the cheapest in the world and of course there is no language problem.

You have to make sure your phone is unlocked (ask T Mobile for the unlock code).

There are 3 recommendations for the UK.

1. T Mobile UK along with a company called yourcall (www.yourcallworld.com). You can go to their web site and see how you can very very easily call from the UK to most anywhere in the world outside the UK for rates as low as 3p/minute...they also explain how you can get a T mobile UK sim card for 50p if you can have it posted to your hotel (or you can go into a T Mobile UK store upon arrival in the UK)....you need a phone with 1800 mhz.

or

Upon arrival go into an Orange UK store and request an Orange Call Abroad sim card...the sim card is free but you have to buy £10 worth of credit at the time of "purchase"....price to call the USA and Canada 5p/minute.

or

Mobile World go into a Carphone Warehouse store and price is the same as Orange (sim card free but £10 worth of credit needed at time of purchase)...for this sim card you need a phone with 900 mhz.

All are very very good deals and the prices as listed are absolutely correct believe it or not (I had a hard time believing the prices too but they are correct).

But the key is making sure your phone is unlocked.

Incidentally, receiving calls while in the UK will be free...also the t Mobile and Orange offers (not Mobile World) also allow you to roam throughout the rest of the eu at the new eurotariff rates (calls back to the UK or within an eu country) are something like 29p/minute while receiving calls will be 19p/minute so if you make a quick trip over to France say you don't need to worry about a French sim package!

Thanks so much for that very helpful reply!

Back to Italy--I do have a Verison phone so I can't take my US phone and am going from the Florence airport to the countryside so I would need to buy or rent a phone at the airport--is this possible and what are the costs?

Thanks.