After spending 2 weeks in Italy, I am happy to report that an unlocked Nokia C6-00 will indeed work with a SIM card from TIM.
The SIM card in question costs 14 euros at any TIM store. I comes with a 5 euro airtime credit. This credit covers both voice and data consumption. Only the phone has the means to avoid having the SIM card lose credit due to data. There is nothing in the SIM card plan that can block the billing for data consumption, so configure your phone not to send data via the network. There are add-on data packages available that reduce the data cost if you insist on sending data over the network rather than Wi-Fi.
It speeds up the registration procedure by bringing a photocopy of your passport which they keep. You will also need to sign a document accepting or rejecting the use of your cellphone number for 1st and 3rd party publicity.
I tested my new card by having another client in the TIM store's lineup accept a call from my newly activated phone.
The big mistake that I made was (knowingly?) allow the saleperson to include in my plan the option for 100 free SMS per week in exchange for a 2 euro debit / week against my air time credits. In fact I never really needed SMS, which is otherwise 9 centimes per text.
I could not understand why my balance was going down by 2 euros per week until I visited another TIM store and they removed that option.
Being a new customer of TIM means you get a lot of technical SMS at first, most of which are in Italian. They will propose that you download their connection to MS Live Messenger.
There is a way to get the TIM robophone to answer in english so that when you need to refill your airtime credits by phone using a voucher, the instructions are in english.
But their website remains exclusively in Italian in case you want to create a personal page there to keep track of your account.
I found network coverage was very complete across three major cities.
One problem I had was at one point, both Wi-Fi email and internet stopped working. Removing my cell phone battery allowed my phone to begin connecting successfully to the internet, but I was frustrated for days trying different free Wi-Fi hot-spots which would not work with my phone.
Otherwise, I had no difficulty connecting directly to the Videotron email server using my phone's client application, thus avoiding the need to use webmail.
The TIM card even works here in Canada as Rogers is their roaming partner. I can send free operational SMS messages back to Italy to discover my residual airtime balance.
But should I ever accept or place a call in Canada using the TIM card, then the Rogers roaming charges will eat up my 5.3 euro balance in a minute or two. So it's back to my original FIDO sim card.
My TIM card should retain this italian phone number for about 12 months. Unfortuantely, I am not planing to return to Italy or the Eurozone for at least two years or more, so I will be losing my account due to inactivity.
All in all, 17 euros was a reasonable price to pay to keep my mobile phone functional for 2 weeks. This was essential for communicating my arrival times to the different apartment rental managers, as well as sending photos back to Canada by wi-fi email.
