Telephones in France

We, the English-speakers, had a running joke about the cabines téléphoniques. Find the hottest shadeless spot in town, and you will find one. It was nearly impossible to read any of the displays because they were faded/melted or just the glare. I was good for about 30 seconds in the daytime before I was cooked. The phones operate on a telephone card, which you can buy in post offices and tobacco stores.

A cell phone was handy. We bought SIM chips for our unlocked cell phones, which we sold on eBay when we returned. When I called, any response except oui, non, and complet was beyond my language capability, so having a cell phone was very convenient for asking someone with language skills to help make a reservation. It did not require dragging them to a hot cabine téléphonique, or spending their money using their cell phone.

An unlocked iPhone may be the best technology at the moment. You can make calls, and use wifi when it is available.

We settled on Orange SIM cards. Orange seemed to have the widest coverage.

I bought an unlocked cell phone on eBay for under $10, a slightly older Motorola with the three GSM frequencies. I now have a later Motorola RAZR that I purchased unlocked. One way to test if it is unlocked is to put your current SIM chip in it and see if it works. Then borrow a chip from a friend who uses another service and see if it works. If both work, your phone is unlocked.

For low international rates, buy a separate dialing card with good rates from France to your home country. An internet search should yield a lot of possibilities. Calling will require dialing a local access number, entering the access code, and then dialing the destination phone number. Standing inside a French phone booth you would broil before hitting the last digit. In the relative cool of a gite, you can punch a wrong button and start over without heat exhaustion. I know it sounds like a joke, but we really did stop using French public phones until about sunset because the booths were so hot.