That's for sure. It does not contain voice or text: L’offre ne permet pas d’usages voix ni SMS/MMS That's clear.

But some people just want to use their phone rather as a modem for data. Visitors who are not speaking French may have found out, that their voice communication with French locals is rather limited :o

You can get 1 GB for €10 on Mobicarte, but VoIP is banned and blocked which makes foreign calls quite expensive like €1.18 per min to the US.

On Let's go or the "Pochette pret a surfer" as its called now, you have VoIP available, pay the same €10 for 1 GB, but obviously need to squeeze some intermediate modem between your phone and the SIM for a reason I can't understand.

Hey, they are selling data for the same rate on both cards/plans. €10 per GB is a pretty good price for France, given that Orange has still the best coverage. Why do they make life so hard for their customers inventing crazy regulations of what to do or use and what not?:chair:

I think for a phone it's never a bad idea to have a SIM that supports voice even if you don't intend to use it much because you can't speak the language. You never know when you might have to call back home in a hurry or receive inbound calls or SMS.

Ans if you want to use Skype for your international calls just turn on your VPN service - these work fine on Orange data plans on voice+data SIMs.

It would be ideal to have a phone number but I noticed some local businesses don't even want to call or text mobile numbers, even local ones.

Email should work just as well as SMS at least.

I agree. But don't forget: most European visitors have already SIM cards mostly at the EU regulated rate. An odd call for around €0.19/min + tax won't set you back.
Problem is that Orange actually prohibits to use their only voice & data prepaid SIM called Mobicarte in a modem/router. Our collected experience on the prepaid Wiki of Mobicarte is somewhat cryptic as it seems to be a hit and miss: "This data plan is for mobile phones and may or may not work on other gear." - that's for voice & data Mobicarte.
And about Mobicarte too: "VoiP services will fail to initialize properly."
Velonomad writes on his blog http://www.velonomad.com/articles/ch...ata-in-france/: "And if you like Skype or VOIP, you can’t use them with Mobicarte. In fact, any attempt to use them could get your SIM blocked." This clearly contradicts your statement.

And this is exactly what I meant: why so much bossing around? Is there any sense this: "Newsgroups sont interdits"??? Operators of EU countries are obliged to net neutrality. This means all blocking or priotizing is illegal. KPN of the Netherlands just paid a high penalty for blocking VoIP. Orange doesn't dare to do this in any other market, but at home.

Yes, you may get your account suspended if you use VOIP directly on a Mobicarte. That's why you need to use a VPN service using a protocol such as IPSEC in tunnel mode as I said in my post. Most modern smartphones support this.

Last week I bought a Mobicarte SIM with a 1 GB package in Nice. I made no attempt at tethering, but had no problem calling home over VoiP, using Skype and Whatsapp.