Yes, one advantage is that you can now use Bouygues Telecom's smartphone apps to check your balance, instead of having to dial 630, which is clumsy as well as being chargeable outside France.

Does anyone know what the latest APN is?

Sorry, I don't know which APN to use. Can you tell me which app you're talking about. The only app I can find that lets you manage your account appears to be an unofficial one. What's the name of the one you're using?

The APN that I successfully used today in France was mmsbouygtel.com (for mainstream internet not MMS).

My B&You SIM cards are not getting 4G, so I asked them to swap them in a Bouygues Telecom shop. They couldn't find me on the system, so I gave up.

Looks like validity is extended by recharging only. So far, placing a call and sending an SMS haven't changed the expiration date, even though the remaining credit changes on the Bouygues website.

http://www.assistance.bouyguesteleco...carte-prepayee
Votre ligne reste ouverte 12 mois à compter de votre dernier rechargement. Vous êtes toujours joignable!


Another thing, the phone was in a drawer for a few weeks, and the first time I switched it on after it had become a Bouygues account it took a while before it was able to do anything (send/receive calls, send messages). I was afraid it had expired, but then after 15 minutes, everything was fine.

Motel75 - it has always displayed an expiry date that is much longer than 365 days since the last chargeable usage. Therefore don't expect it to update each time you use it. They clearly said "vous conserverez votre ligne, vos recharges sans durée de validité".

Unfortunately, I just received an SMS warning me that my line would expire in one month - on the date listed on the website.

"Info 630. Votre ligne est valable jusq'au 19/10/2015. Rechargez en appelant le 630 (gratuit) pour conserver votre numéro!"

There's a discussion (in French) here: http://forum.lesmobiles.com/simyo/fi...10230-100.html

I don't believe there's any permanent problem. Credit on one of my B&You SIM cards disappeared in December 2014 well before the change from Simyo to Bouygues. It was just before a trip to France, so I had to top up by €10. When I complained, they reinstated my original credit, plus my €10 top-up plus a €2 goodwill credit. There is obviously some expiry bug, but they correct it without a fuss

There isn't. A few days after my last post, the expiration date changed to 2018 all by itself. :-)

I'll be in France for 25 days in May and I'm trying to figure out how to get the best deal for this period. I have the old B&YOU/Simyo card which is now the Bouygues card. I'm mostly interested in data and I don't expect to make many telephone calls. I will probably need about 2Gb of data for the entire period.

Does anybody have any suggestions on which offer to take?

Since the beginning, expiration dates are false.... one PAID sms, call or several kilobytes of data and you can keep forever your card....