Mobile tech is easy in Italy
On our first day, we headed straight for the nearest cellphone store, which ended up being a Vodafone provider. First of all, we were astounded at the amount of cell phones available. Canada doesn't have as much of a selection, and most are barely differing older phones with few new features.
In any case, Kris and Robert had been given advanced devices by ComVu to do direct pocketcasting with. I had my Nokia 6630, which I bought the last time I was in Europe. We all had to pull out our passports in order to get Vodafone SIM cards, which was a surprise.
Not speaking Italian, it was a bit difficult to figure out the different plans. In the end, we got a 60 hour data plan for only 30EU. Contrast this with my $50CDN unlimited data plan which is only available to grandfathered accounts before Fido was bought by Rogers. And let's compare speeds. In Canada, it's a GPRS connection that is at most 40kbps, while the UMTS here in Italy can be up to 320kbps. That's about as fast as some of the broadband lite plans that people have for their desktops!
OK, so we're done the paperwork, have our passports photocopied, and have the SIMs in hand. Kris and Robert were dealing with their devices for the first time, so were fiddling a bit. I powered down my phone, popped out the Fido SIM, and stuck in the new one. Power on...voila! It's up and running with SMS messages from Vodafone Italia coming in that I mostly didn't understand. Wandering around the menu items, the 64K SIM had actually installed a little menu app that pointed to various online Vodafone resources. The next part blew me away...SMS messages came in which actually contained the new configuration settings for data access. I was prompted for the PIN code that came with the SIM, then hit save, and the settings were automatically applied and set as defaults.
What? That's it? I went into ShoZu, set the default access point to the new Vodafone one, and started snapping pictures. I've struggled to find the proper access settings for Fido, Rogers, and US providers. It's like they don't want you to use data. In Italy, it's expected to "just work". So, I'm impressed. Can we do this in Canada? I think we can. The carriers are definitely still a barrier at this point, especially when only Fido/Rogers support SIM cards. Perhaps another Mobile operator that just sold SIM cards and leased the Fido/Rogers network? I know the mobile tech is out there, now the challenge is to get it all implemented. I believe this will be a key piece of functionality for the 2010 Games in Vancouver.
