Rent a Cell Phone for Your Trip!

Unlike the food, art, and scenery, the public phone system is not one of Italy's charms.

Some public phones accept only coins; others accept only phone cards; some have never been upgraded and still accept only pre-Euro phone cards. The touch tone buttons are typically there just for show: you press them quickly and then wait for them to be converted into pulse dialing tones. They also don't translate the (#)' or (*) signs into signal tones that American phones recognize. That means you can't use them when entering your access codes and will typically need operator assistance-just to check your answering machine. And the hotels are slowly learning from their American cousins that the phone "surcharge" game is an easy way to increase margins.

Before leaving the States for our first trip to Tuscany we added an International Dialing Plan to our MCI profile so that we could call the U.S. from Italy for about 37 cents/minute.

We stayed in an apartment that had no phone line. Our village had a single antiquated phone booth with the phony "touch tone" buttons and couldn't process the pound sign for our MCI access code. So, after dialing the Italy MCI access number, we would wait for an operator to come on the phone, give her our access code verbally, and wait to be connected.

We came home to a $600 phone bill for less than two hours of calls to the States. MCI had billed us $6.50 per minute for all of our "operator assisted calls".

Having a pre-configured cellphone to take with you on your trip is the most convenient and hassle-free way to stay in touch with the States while you're gone.

Telestial is a market leader in this arena and offers cellphones that are shipped to your door already configured with the appropriate access chips for your travel destinations.

Click here to see available offers.