I recently returned from a wonderful trip to Italy. Whilst travelling through the remnants of ancient Rome, floating past San Marco in Venice or relaxing on the beaches in Lignano, it’s hard to find much to complain about. I was somewhat surprised however by how difficult it was to get mobile internet connectivity and indeed in how far behind us South Africans the Italian mobile network operators seem to be.

Having heard horror stories about eye-watering phone bills from friends and colleagues who had opted to take their South African SIM cards overseas, I decided to leave mine at home, thinking it would be a cinch to buy a SIM card on arrival and be up-and-running with fast, low cost internet via my mobile in a few minutes. On a recent trip to the Mobile Research Conference in the UK, that strategy worked out well for me. Unfortunately, Italy was a completely different story.

My initial surprise was how difficult it was to procure a SIM card in the first place. Walking through the streets of Rome, I must have enquired at 4 or 5 cellular stores – each out of stock with new supplies only expected the following week. I was quite keen on buying a Vodafone IT SIM since I use Vodacom here in South Africa which is partially owned by Vodafone. When I finally found a store which had SIMs in stock, they were for the TIM network – not one which I had heard of before arriving in Italy – but certainly a big player based on the number of adverts I saw on Italian television.

The TIM SIM card set me back €10 (about R110 at the time of this post) and included €5 of airtime. The €5 for the actual SIM is more than 50 times more expensive than in SA (you can buy a SIM for under R1 here). Of course the exchange rate plays a part here but certainly doesn’t account for such a large discrepancy.

Another interesting difference was that, whilst in SA buying a pre-paid SIM is literally a matter of pulling one off the shelf and proceeding to the cashier, in Italy I had to provide a copy of my passport and sign a document to buy one. As my Italian is limited to a few basic words and being able to count to 10, I have no idea what I actually signed. The anonymity with which SIM cards can be purchased in South Africa may well change with the introduction of new legislation here so we’ll have to see whether that remains the case. While I can understand the motivation behind such administrative procedures in an attempt to curb terrorism (I would imagine), it is certainly annoying and debateable as to whether this actually has any real effect.

In any event, upon securing my new SIM card, I hurriedly inserted it, hoping to send some loved ones messages as to my safe arrival as well as get in touch with the office. To my disgust, I was unable to do any of these things. Only after contacting the TIM call centre (which would have been impossible without the help of a friend with functional command of the language), did I discover that it takes 24 hours for the SIM to be enabled. Again, in contrast to the local situation, one would be up-and-running within minutes of cracking open the SIM. This delay may well be a result of the administrative procedures but it’s anyone’s guess really.

Once the mandatory 24 hour waiting period had passed, I was about to send and receive text messages. Unfortunately internet access would be a far tougher nut to crack. After a few days of travelling, I found a TIM store where I was given a few internet bundle options. I chose a 100MB / 100 hour package which apparently gave me access to 100MB of data or 100 hours of surfing, whichever came first. Although I’m not used to the concept of time-based internet browsing (all our mobile internet access here is based on data transfer), I paid the €25 for the package (more expensive per megabyte than even our highest out of bundle rate here in SA but still a fraction of the cost of international data roaming). The next stumbling block was getting the necessary Access Point settings for the TIM network. This shouldn’t be a complicated exercise but the confusion which arose between my mentioning that it was a South African phone, and the sales agent’s incompetence was somewhat comical. Eventually the necessary AP was configured and the connection with my twitter account and email was restored. And I holidayed happily ever after.

Well not quite. After spending what couldn’t have been more than half an hour that evening checking email, remoting in to a few systems, and some other bits and pieces, my connection died. Checking my airtime balance (not a simple task) revealed that instead of the bundle which should have been loaded, my surfing had eaten all my airtime which is why (I presumed) my session had been terminated. A colleague suggested that I wait a day and buy some more airtime by which stage the bundle should have kicked in. I did this, buying €10 and loading it a day or two later. Again, I was met with frustration. After following the instructions on the card to the letter, and receiving an SMS that my request had been received, a few hours later I was sent a message advising me that precisely 0 Euros had been recharged to my account. Retrying to load the card produced a message that it had already been used – the airtime lost somewhere in cellular cyberspace.

It was at this point that I conceded my failure to become an Italian mobile user and hauled my laptop to the nearest internet cafe. I got what I needed to do urgently done in about an hour and a half for €5 including a coke.

I’m not sure whether I was unlucky in my experience, picked a bad network, am an idiot or some combination but I was definitely left surprised, annoyed and unsatisfied with my Italian mobile internet experience. I was also left with a renewed admiration for our mobile infrastructure in South Africa – and indeed in Africa. We haven’t got much of what the developed world has in numerous other areas but in terms of mobile technology, I’d say we’re streaks ahead – and that’s something to be proud of. Of course we shouldn’t get complacent – there’s a lot still to be done and pricing needs to be reduced drastically but, in the context of mobile internet connectivity and the upcoming 2010 world cup, I think foreign tourists will be pleasantly surprised.