Recommended SIM for Italy ?

[Steve " 'dillo" Okay]

Greetings OM-heads,
I'm currently in Trieste for a seminar and brought my Freerunner here  
with me from the US.
I bought a Vodaphone SIM which doesn't seem to work in my GTA02, but  
works in just every other phone I've put it in.

Can anybody recommend a Euro SIM/carrier that is known to work in a  
GTA02, preferably if you know it works in Italy.

Could this be an OS/distro problem? I'm running OM-2008-12 with  
Konfigurator.
Are there any command-line utilities I can use to get diagnostics or  
info on the SIM itself ?
The GUI simply says "SIM missing" or "Not registered" with no further  
details.

Thanks,
----Steve