TIM SIM Card
 

This will be my first trip to Italy with a cell phone. Several posters have suggested getting a TIM SIM card at Termini when we arrive in Rome. Does anyone know if this company has decent coverage throughout Tuscany as well as Rome. (Orvieto, Pienza, Siena, Florence, Lucca, Pisa, and points between.

Also we will be in London for a few days at the end, will the Italian TIM SIM card work there, and / or will the French card from SFR work assuming it is still active. This is a phone a friend used in France in Sept 2009, the receipt for the card says "Date limite d'utillsation 07/2011. Hopefully that means the SIM is active until that date.

Thanks all.

First we'll start with the French card. Maybe someone will answer who can speak French and understand it, but from past experience most cards last a year from the date you start using it. So that would be September 2010. The 7/2011 is possibly the date it expires if not used.

We have previously used TIM and WIND which expire a year from activation whether you have money on them or not if it isn't used within that year. We did use the TIM card in London, but they charge a lot more per call. This year we had to buy a new phone and we looked up to see about different SIM cards. We found GO-SIMs. It's cheaper than TIM and WIND and never expires no matter how long you don't use it. With TIM and WIND we can't set up adding money on our computer at home because it doesn't recognize foreign IP addresses. We have to buy cards in Italy and manually add it on the phone. With GO-SIMs we can have automatic recharge when it hits a certain dollar amount.

PS Yes, TIM has good coverage. Sometimes you hit bad spots but we have experienced good coverage with it everywhere.

In my experience TIM coverage is excellent both in cities as well as rural Tuscany & Umbria.

TIM coverage with a 900Mhz+1800hz phone was good, but poor in rural areas with the 1800Mhz only phone.

Good point. The phone I used was dual band 900Mhz+1800hz.