Q: iPhone 3Gs unable to restore and update

Recently my sister gave my mom an iPhone 3Gs from Australia which she used there for a year. I tried syncing it with my iTunes but was facing problems with that. Then I tried to update it with the latest software and restore it back to factory settings as I wanted it to work with my own apple id and password. But in the process it got stuck at Recovery Mode. I tried all different ways suggested on the website and help section including downloading the update again and trying to restore but none of them has helped, everytime it shows an error message- iPhone update server could not be connected or is temporarily unavailable.. pls try again later!!!  Now the iPhone is hung at screen showing "connect to iTunes" logo and is pretty much useless. Any suggestions?