Following was posted by myself and lol in response to Scotch Lad.
I am connected via bluetooth to my Nokia smart phone and we are in Padova after a day in Venice. It can be costly and if you have a smart phone with basic "Opera" browser it is cheaper than using laptop but more basic ( I also use Opera ). But have a read and I hope it helps
"Scotch Lad, has your phone got internet access? If you have not tried it before you may find that your service provider hasn't enabled it for you, it usually comes as part of a package when you buy the phone. I can only go on what my son has done with his phone. He bought an internet ready phone, with this came a lead that connects his phone to his laptop. Included with the phone was an installation disk that installed a program onto the laptop to give it the ability of using the phones internet access. If you have these items it is a straight forward case of installation and following the instructions, my son (with a little help from his old man) was up and running within 30 mins. Connection speed is quite slow and can only be compared to dialup internet access despite claims that it is similar to broadband. As for costs, they can vary greatly depending on your package and usage. Connect through the gprs system and you may only be paying for items that you download, this mean you can surf to your hearts content without paying extra, my son has a package where he pays a small fee to do this each month. I myself have an XDA which gives me access to the internet and have never paid any extra to browse the net.
Your first port of call must be your service provider to see what if any internet access you can get on your phone, and then take it from there."
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"Virgin buy airtime from the likes of Vodafone I think!
So all possibilities may not be available! Friends have found this!
You need WAP and GPRS enabled phone at least with roaming enabled! Normally you pay to download info by the kb.
You can connect as I do to phone by infra red or blue tooth if you phone has either option.
I use mobile for laptop prog from www.webtogo.de @ a cost of 29 euro per year + call charges. It is sligtly faster than dial up normaly if you degrade picture quality afeature of the prog to savemoney and speed up downloads!
Anywhere I can get phone signal I can use net and book hotels and do banking etc!
Some internet enabled phones let you surf and send and receive email but will not let you do secure things like banking!
If your laptop is not a "centrino" type I would go for a wi-fi plug in card so you can connect at free or pay wi-fi hotspots in europe and UK. You can buy Wi-fi card from about