My wife's mother is 85 and she and my wife talk daily for about 1/2 hour. I have read the various alternatives on Slowtravel Italy and it would appear the cheapest might be a calling card for her mom coupled with a cheap cell phone with an Italy SIM card for us (we have an ATT cell phone but it appears to be a model with a hard lock that none of the unlock companies I have looked at deal with).

There is a firm called "Roam Simple" that advertises a refurbished phone for $49 (but I saw it at another Internet frim for $25) that has all the right frequencies. They want $19 for the SIM card, and their billing is postpaid rather than loaded up front. They say incoming calls are "free." so-how "free" is free? Would then the only charge for these calls be on the calling card her mom uses? Has anyone worked with Roam Simple? Any other alternatives or companies people have used?

You will not have regular access to the internet, will you?
With a regular access to the internet the cheap alternative is Skype (2 euro cents per minute between the US and Italy).

some internet cafe now offer VOIP "phone calls" too - the one in my town is 7 cents/minute :-) and that's what I use now...incoming calls to my Italian phone (and SIM) and free...but it cost me a fortune the last time I gave my mother a calling card to use because, although calls to Italy are cheap, you are charged much more to he cards for calls to a cell phone.

If you will have a land-line though, just use a calling card and tell her to call you...we use http://www.uniontelecard.com/ ALL the time for calls abroad - VERY cheap...except to cell phones :-( (and, you can just top it off on the computer with your credit card)

Thank you Musetta
I suspected there was a "catch." Our landlord has not yet answered whether there is a land line in the apartment we are renting. Somehow I think not. Our last place did supply a cell phone, but of course as you point out that would not help keep costs down.

Not sure if the Internet cafe in Montepulciano has VOIP-we only used it for e mail last time. For my wife's comfort level I'd like to set things up before we go. Her mom went through several major surgeries earlier this year and we need to keep close contact with her.

Does the VOIP from your Internet cafe forward to your cell? Maybe we could then put her mom on a VOIP service in the US and connect to us through the cafe in M that way-but I don't know how to find out if they offer the service.

Which way are you calling? If it's US to Italy then just get a phone and sim in Italy. Receiving calls will be free. A low end new phone is about 30 Euros. The SIM won't really cost you any money. They'll charge something like 5-10 Euros for the SIM but it will include that much credit.

If you're calling from Italy to the US I've never found a calling card that made sense to use with a cellphone. Memory tells me most [if not all] charge more then what TIM charges to make the call. Plus you'll get hit with a charge from the cellphone company. From what I can figure it's 50 cents a minute to call the US with TIM.

If you have cell phone with TIM, you can buy a phone card called International Telecom (bought a couple of 5euro cards at the Venice Tourist office near San Marco last November).

The card provides a phone number to use for a TIM cell phone. It cost about .70 euro for the first minute and then .10 for additional minutes AND it does not use any of the TIM minutes. I found it to be the cheapest way to call the US without a landline.

If your ATT phone is a quad band phone you can use it in Italy.

1. Get the international calling card you mentioned.
2. Call ATT and tell them you want the Subsidy Unlock Code because you will be traveling in Europe. (I've done this twice with no hassle from ATT. It just takes a little while for it to arrive.)
3. Also ask them to set up your ATT phone for international roaming. It's been a while since I did this but I think the rates are about $.95 - $1.30
4. Once you get to Italy, buy an Italian SIM and get the number.
5. Call your wife's mother and give her the cell phone Italian number. YOu can do this on the Italian SIM card or your ATT SIM card depending on which is less expensive.
6. Put the Italian SIM in your ATT Phone. (you'll have to make sure it's a quad band phone)
7. Your wife's mother can call the Italian cell phone number with the calling card you've purchased.

I suggest you decide on a time for you wife and your mother in law to have the call and agree on that time each day. Early morning ~ 7:00 AM in Italy should be early to mid afternoon at your mother-in-law's home (assuming you are from the US or Canada).

Simplest way is to just go to a TIM office when you get to Italy and buy a prepaid phone. All incoming calls to the phone are free and the outbound rates someone mentioned above. You'll have an Italian phone number that mom can call anytime.

We did that the last trip over and it worked great as a family member needed to stay in touch with us regarding a real estate transaction. When we called, they'd call us back and I paid the long distance charges on the home phone after we got back.

The cost of the phone from TIM is under E50 so it's well worth the investment. Each time you go back to Italy, you have a phone or loan it to friends. My phone makes more trips than I do and I'm so jealous of that darn phone....

Easiest way..

Sounds like a good option, though I was unable to find them through Google. Ideally I'd like to have at least one option set up before we go..I can possibly switch to something else once there. But I will keep this idea and see if I can find one of these cards once I get to Italy

Thanks

Thanks, Bill. I had thought about the time issue and prescheduling the time for her mom to call. I do need to check with ATT. I have a Nokia 6102i and none of the online "unlock" services seem to be able to handle that model. Perhaps ATT can

Sounds like another good option, and thanks for the suggestion. I need to find an option that is fairly cheap, as they "chat" for 1/2 hour per day and I think this is really a necessity given her mom's age and recent illnesses. So I'm printing off the various options to run down and decide on.

don't know about forwarding...never tried it. I agree with getting a local SIM...and incoming calls are free as said before...was just pointing out that, if they buy her a calling card, the rates for Mom to call Italy are much higher with a cell phone than calling a land line (still could be decent though - can't remember) We, for instance, use the "mega clean and stable" ;-) and it is only 1.8 ¢ to call Italy from the US...but the cell phone rate is much higher.

The rates to cell phones seem to start at about $.17 and go up from there, so they are indeed a lot more costly (particularly for 30 minute calls)

The VOIP approach would appear to be the cheapest, but I haven't been able to figure out the Internet Train web site well enough to put in the right info to get the rates or how it works.

Just trying for some perspective here:

I'm not sure how long you are planning to be away, but let's say it's two weeks, 14 days. If your wife speaks 30 minutes each day, that's 420 minutes. So, at $0.20 per minute (rounding up your figure in above post) you have a total of $84. Most likely, this is not going to be a large fraction of your expenditures on the trip.

Again, just looking for some perspective.

Tessmar,

I would recommend a cell phone. This gives you the option to call anytime you desire and allows you to receive calls at any time during the day or night. If there is an emergency back home (God forbid), you can be reached without delay. This will give you and your wife a sense of security knowing that your wife's mother can reach you at all times. Also, you may want to make two calls during the day, maybe 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening, to ease any uncertainty.

Just a few things to think about.

Joe

Good comments, Marian. We'll be gone 30 days, so the amount is more like $180, plus the SIM card, and perhaps a phone if I can't get mine unlocked. Again, not a huge portion of the trip cost...but I'd rather spend as big a chunk of this on something else as I can. But you are right about needing to keep things in perspective

Tessmar, it there any chance your MIL could learn to use Skype and initiate the calls to your wife from the US? Then you could simply buy a low end cellulare upon arrival in Italy and MIL could call when she felt like it for Skype's rather minimal fees.

If you have access to a landline in Italy, but no internet for skype/voip, initiate the call from the U.S. using http://www.jajah.com
It places a call to the US number and the Italian number, and connects the two. Rates to landlines are 3.4 cents U.S/minute, and neither the US nor Italian phones charge you for the incoming call. Rates to Italian cell phones are higher, 24.2 cents/minute.

I believe you can also setup your jajah account so you can initiate the call from a phone, and not just from a web browser, so it can be used when neither party has web access. I also use it with from the states with my U.S. cell phone, since I have a web browser on the phone; way cheaper than billing calls to Italy to my AT&T account.

Half an hour a day is a long time to stay on the phone when one is on holiday, but if those are your wife's needs, it is great of you to be such a supportive husband.
Not knowing where you will be staying, I would like to point out regarding cel phone use, coverage can be spotty in the more rural areas in Europe.

"I suggest you decide on a time for you wife and your mother in law to have the call and agree on that time each day. Early morning ~ 7:00 AM in Italy should be early to mid afternoon at your mother-in-law's home (assuming you are from the US or Canada)."

This is not correct and is the reason I woke up a friend in NY at 4:30 AM! SUBTRACT 6 hours. 7 AM in Italy is 1 AM in EDT. People really do not like having the phone ring at the baby hours of night.

Thanks Judith. I did realize there was an error in the time calculation. My past includes some international work that involved conference calls with both Europe and Asia so I got pretty competent at figuring out "odd" times that would work...but I appreciate you pointing out the error to help avoid "brain fade"

Thanks. I have not heard of them, but I'll check it out. It appears there are lots of options to choose from that are less expensive than renting a cell phone and just making calls on it, which would cost about $30 a day for a single 30 minute call to the US if I just use my ATT service!

A half hour a day is indeed a long time to stay on a phone even when not on vacation, and I doubt my wife will do this every afternoon or evening(since that will be the most likely time that would work for both time zones)but, having lost both my parents as a young man I do indeed support her need to stay close to her only remaining parent.

I also had thought of Skype and will check to see if someone "back there" could work with her to use it (she lives in Florida and we are in California).

quote:

This is not correct and is the reason I woke up a friend in NY at 4:30 AM! SUBTRACT 6 hours

Brain fade is right! Sorry.

Thanks, Judith, for correcting my error!

It's also interesting to ask your hosts in Italy what the possibilities are to call to the USA from their landline.

For example: we have "Teleconomy International" at our house and this means we can make free international calls to landlines.
It's very easy for us because we can contact our family abroad as much as we want and guests don't have to count every minute they're on the phone because it's free.

I can imagine that we're not the only ones with this system, so ask about it !

Thank you Natascha. Our host is away right now but I have sent a note asking if there was a landline in the apartment. It would be nice if listings mentioned phone service but I have not seen any that do.

My wife and her Mom are very close and like to have long conversations, or this topic would not be an issue. We would have a cell phone anyway for our needs in Italy, and a five minute call once a day to say hello would not be a problem. But the lowest rates I have seen involving a call to or from a cell phone adds up to a couple of hundred dollars over the course of the month that I'm sure both my wife and I would rather spend on something related to our holiday...like a dress for her or a coule of bottles of Brunello!

just be extremely careful if you decide to use your US cell in Italy. That 90 cents a minute or whatever mounts up fast. I used T mobile and it ended up costing me over $500 for 3 weeks.

THanks, Rome Addict. The US cell situation is annoying at best. Locked phones, outrageous International rates that are 3 times anyone else's, and if you add the capability you can't later drop it and go back to your former plan because as a marketing gimmick they usually "no longer offer" what you were on, forcing you to upgrade (at more cost, natch).

The obvious answer is get the phone unlocked or buy an unlocked phone (I have seen older or refurbished models for as little as $25) and get an Italian (TIM or Vodaphone) SIM. The rates are still high compared to land line connections- the cheapest I have seen is around $.25 per minute). And I have not yet found a calling card that can be used with a cell connection (regardless of which end of the call is cell) for less than that- "Just Travel" posted a note about a card purchased in Venice called "International Telecom" but I have been unable to locate anything about it on Google