dialing italia

Long distance telephone service, as many may know, is hell. International is worse.

If you have unmodified home or mobile phone service, you surely have some punitive rate designed to reap profits from occasional or unknowing consumers. You could upgrade to one of many value plans, each one forcing you into an uncomfortable characterization of use and intent.

If you lack the vigilance, foresight, or courage to switch to such a plan, you could use an equal-access dial-around casual-caller code. These are the 10-10-XXX numbers that I hold responsible for that particularly bad bout of television advertising in the mid-90s. While these seem to be low-commitment low-hassle low-cost (10-10PhoneRates.com: Italy), the net tells tales of baroque billing system complexities causing financial woe.

Oddly enough, the more reputable option might be to walk down to the corner malaysian-cellphone-cover-and-cigarette shop to pick up a prepaid calling card.

I wound up so frustrated with the sketchiness of these options, I broke down and gave my money to Skype. Paypal'ing 10€ and getting over the confusion of international dialing codes took a minute; soon enough I was conversing in broken italian with a hotel clerk.

At first I thought that this must be the consequence of cruel-yet-efficient markets; it finds ways to separate freeloaders from those with the will to bring downward price pressure to bear. But I don't know now. I'm sure if I devoted the time I could use some kind of libertarian mind-fu to spin this pricing insanity back into a morality play on government regulation.

Anyway, it is a testament to the convolution of this industry that consumersearch.com reviews sites that themselves review long distance plans.