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Iphone usage in Italy

wickerman1893

wickerman1893

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 16, 2008
468
0
Hey guys, during my spring break in a few months I'm gonna be taking a trip to Italy and I'll be taking my iPhone. Im curious on how I can use my phone primarily for texting and calling without huge fees or roaming charges. Would I have to unlock and jailbreak? Any suggestions...? Thanks
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

If you're running firmware 4.0.2 or above, then an unlock is impossible. You might have to borrow another phone if you don't want to incur roaming charges. :(
 
Use the hotels wifi with skype... other than that ATT data rates for over seas is REDICULOUS. You can get 20mb per month for $199 per month for overseas.
 
You can unlock an iphone with 4.0.2. It's 4.1 that prohibits unlocking.
If you jailbreak and unlock, you can buy a pre-paid SIM from one of the Italian providers. You'll have to edit APN info (google: apn iphone), but that's not a big deal.
Make sure your modem firmware is not 2.x, because you won't be able to unlock. Use limerain to jailbreak, because greenpoison only works on 4.1.

applebook said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

If you're running firmware 4.0.2 or above, then an unlock is impossible. You might have to borrow another phone if you don't want to incur roaming charges. :(
Click to expand...
 
I went there last summer, before I went I added the world traveler option which gives discounted rates for voicecalls. Texts are billed at 50 cents each sent, I dont think I incurred any received charge. It added up super quick, but the rep screwed something up when they added the international options so I got back to a $350 bill...promptly called CS and they killed like $250 of the charges...so unless you can get your iPhone successfully unlocked (i'm sure they'll be a 4.2 unlock out by spring), pick up another cheap phone on ebay and get a European sim from Voda IT or similar carrier.
 
If you end up taking your phone over there and plan to use just wifi, don't forget to turn on Airplane mode, then turn on wifi.

Also, if you plan on the above, you could possibly use google voice, couldn't you?
 
if you want to use the internet a good option is buying a sim there from 3.
They offer 3gb a month for 5 euro on PAYG so you can just grab a sim, load 10 euros into it and activate the internet. In the 3gb there's also 2000 skype minutes included separate from the data itself.
Once you've set that up sending free sms's from apps is quickly done!
 
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