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ITALY
- COMMUNICATIONS: POST, PHONES
AND THE MEDIA |
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Opening hours of main post
offices are usually
Monday-Saturday 8.30am-7.30pm;
others are likely to be open
Monday-Friday 8.30am-5pm and
Saturday 8.30am-noon, and
offices in smaller towns may
close altogether on Saturday.
Note too that offices may
close an hour earlier on the
last working day of the month.
Stamps ( francobolli ),
are sold in tabacchi
too, as well as in some gift
shops in the tourist resorts;
they will often also weigh
your letter. The Italian
postal system is one of the
worst in Europe, but if you're
determined to write, airmail
letter rates are £800/?0.41
anywhere within the European
Union, and £1500/?0.77 to
North America, Australia and
New Zealand. Letters can be
sent poste restante to any
Italian post office, by
addressing them "Fermo
Posta" followed by the
name of the town. When picking
something up take your
passport, and make sure they
check under middle names and
initials - and every other
letter when all else fails -
as filing is often diabolical.
Telephones
Public telephones ,
run by Telecom Italia
, come in various forms,
usually with clear
instructions in English. At
the time of writing, coin-operated
phones take £100, £200 and
£500 coins; you need at
least £200 to start a call,
even to toll-free numbers
(the money is refunded at
the end of the call). Most
phones will only accept telephone
cards ( carte or schede
telefoniche ), available
from tabacchi and newsstands
for £5000, £10,000 or £15,000,
but there's sometimes one
nearby that takes coins.
Note that the perforated
corner of these cards must
be torn off before they can
be used. If you can't find a
phone box, bars will often
have a phone you can use -
look for the red phone
symbol.
Telephone numbers
change with amazing
frequency in Italy, a
practice which has resulted
in numbers having anything
between four and eight
digits, not including the
code which is usually
somewhere between two and
four digits long. The codes
are now an integral part of
the number and always need
to dialled, regardless of
whether or not you are in
the zone you are
telephoning. If in doubt,
consult the local directory
- there's a copy in most
Italian bars, hotels and, of
course, telephone offices.
Numbers beginning tel 800,
tel 147 and tel 167 are
free; tel 170 will get you
through to an English
speaking operator, tel 176
to international directory
enquiries.
You can make international
calls from any booth
that accepts cards or any
other booth labelled interurbano
; put in at least £2000 to
be sure of getting through.
Alternatively, use a special
international phone card
( carta telefonica
internazionale )
available from post offices
for £12,500, £25,000, £50,000
and £100,000; all
cardphones accept them, but
before each call you need to
dial tel 1740 and the PIN
number on the back of the
card. One of the cheapest
ways to make international
calls, however, is to get
hold of a phone card before
you leave: in the UK, from British
Telecom (tel
0800/345144) or Cable
& Wireless (tel
0500/100505); in the US,
from AT&T (tel
1-800/543-3117) or MCI
(tel 1-800/444-3333, www.mci.com
); in Australia, from Telstra
(tel 1800/038 000) or Optus
(tel 1300/300 937); and in
New Zealand, from Telecom
NZ (tel 04/801 9000).
Simple user instructions are
supplied with the cards and
the cost of the connected
call is added to your
domestic bill or a credit
card account. You can also
make international
reversed charge or collect
calls ( cárico al
destinatario ) by
dialling tel 172 followed by
the country code
, which will connect you to
an operator in your home
country.
Phone tariffs are
among the most expensive in
Europe, though prices drop
to a reduced rate off peak.
For domestic calls a reduced
rate is charged on weekday
nights (6.30pm-8am) and at
weekends (from 1pm on
Saturday through to 8am
Monday morning); it's
cheaper to dial
internationally between 10pm
and 8am Monday to Saturday,
and all day on Sunday.
Unusually, it's often less
expensive to make calls from
your hotel than to use the
pricey public telephones,
whether for domestic or
international calls.
Mobile phones work
on the GSM European
standard. You will hardly
see an Italian without his
or her telefonino ,
but if you are going to join
them make sure you have made
the necessary
"roaming"
arrangements before you
leave home - which may
involve paying a hefty
(refundable) deposit.
Fax and email
Nearly every Italian town
has a fax office ,
but the cost of faxing from
these places is usually
fairly high: for faxes
within Italy, expect to pay
at least £5000/?2.58 for
the first page and £2500/?1.29
for each subsequent page,
plus the cost of the call;
for international faxes it's
about £10,000/?5.16 for the
first and £5000/?2.58 for
subsequent pages, plus the
cost of the call. A cheaper,
fiddlier alternative is to
use one of Telecom Italia's
Pubblifax machines, found in
the larger phone offices
where you'll find groups of
public telephones; these
only charge the cost of the
call plus £2000/?1.03 per
page.
Internet cafés ,
often a simple Internet
point without café
facilities, are now common
in cities and even in
smaller towns, allowing you
to log on for between £10,000/?5.16
and £15,000/?7.75 an hour.
We've detailed options in
all the major cities under
"Listings", and
most tourist offices will
print out a sheet of likely
places; otherwise check out www.cyberiacafe.net/cyberia/guide/ccafe.htm
for a list of cybercafés.
Organizing a free Internet
mail address at sites like www.hotmail.com
and www.yahoo.com is
a handy, reliable way of
keeping in contact with
home. Travelling with a
laptop and a modem enables
you to log in to your own
service provider - and many
provide local-access numbers
- but many travellers find
this isn't as glitch-free as
it should be. Note that
lower-grade hotels tend to
have the non-standard chunky
Italian four-pin phone-plug
whereas more expensive
places almost always use the
standard US-style RJ11
phone-plug.
Newspapers
The Italian press is
fairly regionally based, but
there are some newspapers
that are available all over
the country. The centre-left
La Repubblica and
authoritative right-slanted Corriere
della Sera are the two
most widely read and
available, published
nationwide with local
supplements. The
traditionally radical Il
Manifesto has in recent
years lost ground to L'Unità
, the party organ of the
Democratic Left (formerly
the Communist Party), which
has won recognition as the
best-designed and most
readable newspaper. Paese
Sera is another broadly
left-wing daily read widely
in the south. Of other
provincial newspapers, La
Stampa is the daily of
Turin, Il Messaggero
of Rome - both rather
stuffy, establishment
sheets. Il Mattino is
the more readable organ of
Naples and the Campania
area, while other southern
editions include the Giornale
di Sicilia and La Gazzetta
del Sud . Perhaps the
most avidly read newspapers
of all, however, are the
specialist sports papers,
most notably the Corriere
dello Sport and the pink
Gazzetta dello Sport
- both essential reading if
you want to get a handle on
the Italian football scene.
English-language
newspapers can be found
for around three times their
home cover price in all the
larger cities and most of
the more established
resorts, usually a day late,
though in Milan and Rome you
can sometimes find the
papers on the day of
publication, especially
those such as The Times
, the Financial Times
, the Guardian , the European
, the New York Times
, the Wall Street Journal
and the International
Herald Tribune , which
publish a European edition.
Conversely, in the remoter
parts of the country it's
not unusual for papers to be
delayed by several days.
TV and radio
If you get the chance, try
to watch some Italian TV
, if only to size up the
pros and cons of
deregulation. Although the
much-vaunted programmes with
stripping housewives and the
like do exist, the output is
otherwise pretty bland, with
the accent on ghastly quiz
shows, shopping channels,
cathartic chat shows in
which the famous and
not-so-famous air their
dirty linen, and soaps, plus
a heavy smattering of
American imports.
Nevertheless, the three
national channels, RAI 1, 2
and 3, have the odd worthy
programme; RAI 3 remains
broadly left-wing, with its
output leaning more towards
the cultural and
intellectual, and is the
outlet for local news and
features. Satellite
television is fairly widely
distributed, and three-star
hotels and above almost
always offer the usual mix
of BBC World, CNN and
French-, German- and
Spanish-language news
channels, as well as MTV and
Eurosport.
The situation in radio
is if anything even more
anarchic, with the FM waves
crowded to the extent that
you continually pick up new
stations whether you want to
or not. This means there are
generally some good stations
if you search hard enough,
but on the whole the RAI
stations are again the more
professional - though even
with them daytime listening
is virtually undiluted
Europop.
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