Does anyone know if any of the large US-based ISPs (AOL, Earthlink, etc.) do business in Italy? In other words, other than with a US account, can someone in Italy open a local account with one of these ISPs?

Even better, you can sign up for a free Italian ISP account...like Kataweb, Jumpy, Libero,etc. These providers have local access numbers all over the country and are now phasing in a single number that is a local call from anywhere.

The trick is that the signup process is usually in Italian. But I believe that Cristina has established an account that Slow Travelers can use while in Italy.

Here is a thread about this:
FAQ THREAD

I have a page on the web site with some information:
Italy: Instructions - Internet

We have used AOL and Earthlink from Italy. Last year we used the free accounts on both JUMPY and TIN. They worked well and there was no extra hourly charge as with AOL and Earthlink.