I need to be able to stay in contact with ppl in the states while I am in Italy for 14 days. Someone said something about purchasing a sim card there.

If you search the forums for "cell phones in Italy" there is a lot of information there. I am leaving for Italy in a few days, and am still ambivalent about my iPhone, or buying a cell phone. I think I'll use my iPhone as little as possible only if I can find WiFi, and that my DH will buy himself a cheap European quad band phone. Good luck.

If you want to use your iPhone with an Italian
SIM card you'll need to have the phone unlocked.

Or you can load Skype onto the phone and use it
to make calls when you have a WIFI connection...

The easiest way is with the BlackBerry from T-Mobile, but the iPhone works well if your hotel has WiFi, or you use a service like Boingo. Skype and iCall both work well.

My mistake. iCall only works in the States and Canada for now.

My wife always purchases a prepaid phone card before European travel. You can call from any pay phone and calls from most hotel rooms are free, i.e. they only charge minutes on the card. Just ensure you find the toll free number for the your country. For example; calling the US from Italy you dial 800-172-444 on the Italian phone. Then you dial the US number. No worries about fees and you can add minutes with a credit card if you call a lot. She takes the cell phone for emergencies, but normal "calling the kids" stuff is always done on the phone card.

When there are two of us traveling and needing to stay in touch we bring both the iphone and a Mobal phone we bought to use over there. The Mobal is cheaper to use and but the iphone is ok --I think you need to order overseas usage?--sorry this was last year--and the huge caveat which you may already know is not to do Internet/Web with the iphone unless you have wireless. The charges for data transfer are vile--even with purchasing a "package" from ATT for the time you are there.

As above there is lots of info on cell phones on other threads as well.

Thanks everyone!