Some wires

A while ago I posted a long blog post about being "unwired". One of the major points of that blog was the lack of a cell phone. Well, I caved, and now have an Italian cell phone number.

(I do warn you that this may be a very techy post, so bear with me if it's not your thing and I'll try and explain it clearly)

For the first two weeks I was attempting to buy the skype phone offered by the mobile carrier 3(tre). What I found though is that the service provider 3 is not very good in Italy. I'm a tech junkie. When I go to get a new piece of technology I do my research. I had been researching cell phones abroad for months before I left. So when I went into the 3 store, I knew what I wanted and that they offered it. The salesperson disagreed with me. I was told even though it is advertised all over their website that I could not only not purchase the skypephone, but I could not get a pay as you go plan from them at all unless I signed a 24 month contract. After a frustrating argument, with the sales person speaking broken english and myself speaking very, very broken Italian, I left empty handed only to walk a block down to the TIM store, where I purchased a SIM card (I already had the phone from a friend, thanks Tim!(not TIM the cell company, Tim the person, confusing I know))

For all the non-techy readers, cell phone contracts work a little differently in Europe than in the States. You do not normally sign your freedom away to a service provider for 2 years. You instead buy a phone(cheaper than in the U.S I may add), and then buy a SIM card from one of the providers here. A SIM card is universal and can go into any phone. It is assigned your number so any phone you put your card in automatically gets connected with your number and service provider. Pretty cool huh? Well it gets better: As I mentioned, contracts don't really exist. Instead you pay-as-you-go. You put 10 euro or however much on your phone. You have an agreement with your service provider that you will pay x amount of money per minute for all calls you make. In my case, this is 10 cents a minute for every call I make. Notice how I said every call you make, because receiving calls is totally free. When you run out, you put more money on your account, either online or buying a prepaid recharge card from any "tobacco store" (tabacchi in Italian, basically a convenience store).

Now lets compare this to the American system of cell contracts. We will ignore exchange rates because for natives of the respective countries that's not important, and I'm going to refer to all currencies as dollars or $. Right now Verizon Wireless' cheapest individual plan is $40 for 450 minutes per month. That includes no text messaging, just 450 minutes of using your cell phone's main function, talking (I know hard to believe that's what they were made for, right?). I'm sure that includes free nights and weekends, but to me that doesn't really factor in, what matters is the ability to call someone at any time.

Take that same $40 and apply it to my rate. That's 400 minutes if you pay 10 cents a minute. Very similar isn't it. In fact, Verizon might even look more appealing at first glance. I think not. Those 400 minutes I have from the $40 I placed on my account, they don't disappear at the end of the month. I'm not restricted per month. Okay, so AT&T has rollover minutes don't they? So if you only use 200 minutes one month you get to keep the extra 200 minutes (we've all seen the commercials, "those minutes are still good!") Yes you get those minutes, but you are still paying $40 again that 2nd month for another 400 minutes. Now why do you need another 400 minutes if you just rolled over 200? See what I'm getting at?

$40 dollars prepaid. It lasts for as long as I need it. If I use 400 minutes a month, poof they're gone when I've used them all. If I only need 200 minutes a month, well then look at that I really only paid $20 a month. Busy month? Lots of gossip? Simply put more money into your account, for the same rate you've been paying all along. Verizon charges 45 cents per every minute you go over your monthly allowance. I might be beating a dead horse but lets do a little math. 600 minutes in a month? If you're using my prepaid service that will cost you $60. Verizon's 450 minute contract? $40 for the first 450 minutes, + $0.45 x 150 = $107.50. In other words, for less than it costs to pay for those 150 extra minutes, you could have 600 minutes on prepaid. Not to mention you don't pay for any calls received! (Sticking with the math theme: Free incoming calls > Free nights and weekends)

Phone break? Not happy with the one you have? Just want to upgrade? Sure, pick which one you want, buy it, and put your SIM card in, none of this waiting 2 years to get a new phone.

Anyone feel ripped off by their U.S. cell contract? I sure do. I'm not going to even get into the whole data/internet on phones argument, this post is already borderline rant, but for those interested one line of stats:

On ANY phone: Verizon: $15 per month for 25mb of data over the entire month, TIM: $10 a month for 50mb of data a day (You see where the rant would come in?)

The phones are better, the plans and pricing is better, and the coverage from what I've seen is the same if not better. All those ready to switch to the European system raise your hand...

Living 'unwired'

This should be no surprise to anyone, and given that I'm keeping a daily blog of my experience here, it should be even more obvious that I am an avid user of the internet. My life at College has been one of connectedness: Emails, Text messages, cell phone calls, Skye and AIM, not to mention constantly checking the web. At all times at school I have with me my cell phone and a way to get my email/internet, whether that be my ipod touch or my laptop. I cannot even tell you how many times a day I check my email not to mention when I'm sitting at my computer and it is just up in the background waiting for a new message to come in. I average enough text messages to fill a short novel every month, with plenty of call minutes used in-between. I keep my calendars, tasks, contacts, and just about everything else for day to day life on the 'cloud' that is the internet.

Coming to Europe is like kicking the habit.

Since I've been here I have used the Internet for exactly 24 hours. I know that because I am required to buy Internet in 24 hour increments of usage from the hotel, and my first 24 ran out just before I started writing this post. 24 hours mind you is not much at all for me. Just enough to check my emails, update the blog, talk to some people on skype, and read my favorite website, Gizmodo. This also includes a couple times I forgot to logout of the internet system here and lost a couple precious hours due to my negligence.

Speaking of Gizmodo, they are covering CES this past week, an event for all things electronics and techy, and normally I follow it online pretty closely. I normally check gizmodo about 15 times a day, but I found myself today catching up on 4 days worth of old news and articles in my favorite world of technology.

I have still not purchased a cell phone, and am almost enjoying holding out getting one. It's nice sometimes to not be so constantly connected. For the first three days my mind kept playing tricks on me, making me habitually reach for my front left pocket, thinking that my cell phone was vibrating and that I needed to answer a text or a call. To check the time I now have to look at my wrist instead of reaching into my pocket, and let me tell you, reading an analog clock has felt almost foreign (as it should I guess). No longer am I walking around with headphones constantly around my neck or on my ears, all at the same time checking twitter feeds or facebook from my ipod while I'm walking to and from class.

My life for so long has strongly incorporated technology to a point where I'm constantly 'wired'. Villanova's #1 most wired campus award back in 2006 was a selling point to me. You could say being connected is my caffeine that gets me through the day, so the next three months has me involuntarily (and in some cases voluntarily) scaling back on my intake. So far I haven't seen any withdrawl symptoms, but we'll see what comes of it over the next three months. I'll just have to switch to another sort of caffeine, Cappuccino anyone?