I was in Rome last night and found a Vodafone store. I was able to find the MiFi device and the promo of 2 GB per month for one year for $139E, or 5Gb per month for two months for 39E. Both plans include the device. I found out some pluses and minuses.

I'll be in Italy at least through December. I'm under contract with At&T with my iPhone and didn't want to get into a contract with an italian company and have two services.

The 120 MB/month AT&T plan on a U.S. iPhone, as mentioned, buys about an hour and 20 minutes or so of Skype, less if you send and receive email. It's easy to parse out a few hundred MB's over a week or two of vacation, but you can't live here on that. I need to be connected at all times so that I can make and receive calls, respond to emails, texts, etc, and I was hoping that a portable modem (MiFi) would enable me to stay connected that way through my U.S. iPhone.

I found the MiFi device is very small, the size of a small cell phone. At first I decided to go with 2GB per month for one year at 139E, because even though I'll be leaving Italy at the end of December there will be several more trips back next year.

However, the salesman showed me that if I leave the modem on at all times, to always receive and send data so that I'm connected as if I was in the U.S., I would burn through 2GB within a week or two. The modem will work after that, but very slowly.

He suggested that I get the two month deal for 5GB at 39E. He said I still probably won't make it through the whole month on that. If it runs out before the end of the month I can go to the Vodafone store and buy more GB's, or upgrade the plan and go to 10 GB per month for an extra 5E per month, or 15 GB per month for an extra 10E per month, which should be plenty.

He said italian smartphone contracts are generally three years. I could buy a dumb phone for calls only at 199E and a very small amount per month, I don't remember exactly, maybe 5-10 E, that is cancelable at one year.

I went with the two month 5 GB plan that I will probably have to upgrade to 10 GB per month and continue month to month after that , and will probably also have to buy a cheap phone with a one year contract. No perfect solutions here for long term phone, internet, email use that I know of while under U.S. iPhone contract, and it could mean carrying my iphone, a dumbphone, and a MiFi modem around.

I haven't actually activated the modem and tested it. I'm heading back to the U.S. for 5 days, and return next week, when I'll be able to see how well it works.