Ah, Telecom Italia. A model of efficiency, business prowess and
dependability. No, really.
In truth, I have never come across a more frustrating organisation
(and I use the word loosely) in my life, and am willing to take
on all comers in a 'no, but you should see
this company'
contest. They've taken years off my life, and my forehead has
many an indentation mark thanks to them.
Moving on. Public telephones are marked with a logo of a red telephone,
and will usually take both pre-paid phone cards (a
scheda
telefonica - on sale at bars and newsagents) and credit cards; ones accepting coins are becoming
rarer and rarer.
In larger towns and cities there are telephone offices (
telefoni)
where you will be allocated a booth from which your call will
be metered; pay at the desk according to how many units (
scatti)
you have used; that box that clicks and whirls frantically when
you use a private 'phone is a domestic scatti-counter. This same
system is used when dialing from a bar or restaurant without a
coin telephone; you will need to have the counter behind the bar
'zeroed' before you obtain a line.
As of December 1998 ALL calls within Italy, be they local or otherwise,
need the area code to be included when dialing. If anyone can
explain how this ‘frees-up' more numbers then please let me know!
If you need to dial an Italian mobile phone number, then be aware
that as of July 2001 the first zero in the number is no longer
required and that the number will not work with the old zero
in place. Many rental properties are now offering a cell-phone
for
renters to use whilst they're in Italy - just pay to credit the
phone with a certain amount and off you go - you can buy a
ricarica
(pre-paid card with code) at many bars and newsagents. On
this
page we have some detailed information for US visitors to Italy
and how they may use their cell phone, or perhaps rent one for
the duration.
All you dynamic folks who travel with laptops may have a couple
of problems with modem configuration. Firstly, there are still
areas that operate on pulse (as opposed to tone) dialling. Secondly,
most modems seem unable to recognise the Italian dialling tone
- you may need to disable the 'wait for dial tone before dialling
option'. And thirdly, for all you AOL users, be prepared for a
few problems - at present there are very few access numbers, and
if you're using a high-speed modem you may well need to 'cripple'
it, sometimes way down to 14,400!
If you have a laptop plugged in during a storm then be prepared
to lose your modem and (if you are really unlucky - like me),
your hard drive, network card, motherboard and power supply. Be
sure to unplug both electricity
and telephone cables. Ha
bloody ha. Make that
two hard drives now. And a Cisco router.
And a laptop. And another hard drive. HDSL box and DSU. Getting
the idea?
