Phone and Internet Access in France

[newfydog]

We just got back from five weeks in France, so I thought I’d give this little write-up as to what I found the current situation. I was amazed how hard it was to find accurate info online as to what works. Access changes quickly these days, but here’s what I found as of May 2011

Phones-
Ivan posted a nice link to Maxroam who offered a SIM card with a British number, plus 10 Euros of credit for 5 Euros. We bought two of these, and they worked great. You need an unlocked GSM phone. One of our phones was locked to T-Mobil, but they gave us an unlock code for free because we have been customers long enough.
The Maxroam rates are pretty good-- free incoming calls, 0.39 a minute to call in Europe, and 0.49 a minute to call the US. You can check your balance and top it up online. I was also able to get a local French number for 5 Euros a month. That made it cheaper for French friends to call me.

http://ryanair.maxroam.com/Home.aspx?ln ... ds&cur=EUR

I saw phones which were locked to a French provider for 29-35 Euros. You then need to buy some time, so figure 45 Euros or more to get a local phone. If you have an unlocked GSM phone you can but a SIM card, but they cost about the same as the cheapo phone+card packages.

Internet—
We carried a netbook, and found WI-Fi in about half the hotels, and some bars and restaurants. It seems most McDonalds have it but I can’t imagine anything on the net being worth going into one of those. The abundant Wi-Fi has wiped out internet cafes. They are much less common than a few years ago.
The place we were staying is in a really small town, but we were able to buy a 3-G USB dongle from SFR. (Cle’ 3-G) Last year one needed a French bank account to buy one of these devices, and they were 70 Euros. Now they are 35 Euros, and you can buy prepaid SIM data cards which go in it. We bought a Gigabyte of data for 35 Euros, which SFR claimed would be enough for 60 days of normal “surfing”. I was skeptical, because here we use 20 gigs a month, but eliminating all the streamed news, music movies and not opening all the photos and you-tubes our friends send us cut our usage way back. We used half a gigabyte in 35 days, and were able to read all the news we wanted, send and answer all our emails, and look for hotels restaurants etc. just fine.
We did have to call customer service twice—once to get it started, and again to get the data card to kick in. If you don’t speak French, get it running before you leave the store (where they spoke very good English by the way).

An interesting side note—A friend had a similar device from another company, and theirs blocked Skype. I was told Skype might be possible on the SFR card but that it would chew up a lot of data. I used it a little, with the video off, and it worked fine, and did not use much data.

I don’t know much about smart phones, but I understand that if your phone is an unlocked GSM phone the SFR prepaid data cards will work, and are far cheaper than roaming. They will work in an IPad bought in the US, which are unlocked GSM, and they will work in some IPhones bought outside the USA, but not in a Verison IPhone.

Kindle—
I can’t say enough about this little device. It lets you haul around all the books and magazines you want in one small package. We bought one with 3-G before leaving, and I heard conflicting reports as to how well it would work in Europe. A Kindle with 3-G costs $50 more than a regular Kindle, but the 3-G is currently free, without subscriptions. The 3-G allows you to access the internet through the rather primitive and slow browser in the “experimental” features.
We have a subscription to the International Herald Tribune. It shows up every morning, in seconds when the device is turned on. The 3-G worked fine, though they did charge an extra $5 a month for “roaming”. It is still a good deal, since paper at the local Tabac costs 3 euros a day, while the subscription is just $9.95.
The internet browser sort of worked as well. By bookmarking the pages I wanted I could easily read my email and check on the news. I had no success sending email as it kept bombing back to the opening page, but it was fine for checking to see if there was something worth getting to a computer to answer. There was no charge for any of the web browsing done though the Kindle.

 

[Deleted member 3000]

Vital information! Thank you. Indeed, internet is getting hard to find in France (my October experience), and WiFi is becoming widespread, although everyone seems to want to keep it locked, and often no one knows the password; some tech sets up the bars system, and never bothers to tell them the password!

Your information on getting internet service on various devices at a reasonable price creates hope! Here's hoping it becomes easier, better, and cheaper. Again, thank you for the post.