One possibility is to have both on O2 UK. For the phone in France, O2's My Europe Extra add-on costs £10 a month and gives free incoming calls in Europe, 25p/min outgoing to Europe. The phone in the UK could be subscribed to O2's Your O2 numbers, which for £5 gives up to 1000 minutes to 10 favourite O2 numbers. For calls only between the 2, this is ideal, and the phone in France would dial a brief missed call and be called back by the other.

But of course, other calls will be made, and someone in France would be a bit anti-social having a UK number to tell their new French friends, so maybe the son would have 2 phones. On the other hand, from the UK O2 also has options for free international calls, conditional on a monthly top-up, e.g 100 free minutes with a £15 top-up, and the credit value can be spent on other calls

Of other UK SIM cards, Malkav has mentioned the virtual brands with cheap int'l calls; I think Orange's new Camel tariff will be cheapest at 10 pence a minute to French mobiles, though it's a bit more expensive for UK calls than their other options

For French SIMs, the ordinary tariffs aren't that hot, but there are interesting optional add-ons such as Orange's various unlimited packages, or SFR's 30 cents per call up to an hour, which would be good both for local calls and with a calling card or similar callthrough access to reach UK or USA

[QUOTE=MATHA531;21993]
....so as of today, and understand it can change tomorrow, probably the best solution is a T Mobile UK pay as you go sim card in the UK using yourcall world for out of country calls, and a French payg in France (knowing full well the limitations of the French carriers).....


If I get my son a FR sim, would any voice interaction with the carrier be in French? (He's an advanced French student, but perhaps not that advanced.)

French
 

I would EXPECT the voice interactions to be en francais (pardon my keyboard). Perhaps there are English-speaking CSRs, but it's NOT Canada where you might have a choice of languages.

Anyway, it will be good practice for him. He's going to be living and studying there, right? Might as well try it with the mobile phone guys, too.

Since I speak a little French, I always TRY to speak it when I am there.

Stan

I'll tell you this...Orange FR does not allow you to change language for either voice mail prompts or menu prompts...it's French all the way....don't know about SFR.

All carriers have english speaking cc representatives...

I don't think that he'll have a lot of voice interaction with the cc department though...

And since he speaks some french, he will probably be able to cope with the PAYG prompts (if he can't change them to English)...

Sorry gmmour...when I first got my French sim card, (Orange FR), it was possible to set the voice menus and voicemail menu to English, it is no longer possible, trust me on this (unless it very recently changed).