First confirmation : they will sell sim in Virgin megastore

Today, on the champs-elys?es store : :D

http://www.pdafrance.com/img/pdanews...P1046small.jpg

http://www.pdafrance.com/img/pdanews...P1050small.jpg

Wow this is great. Obviously, VM hasn't finished expanding just yet. I don't think we'll see them here in Germany just yet unless they end up signing on as an MVNO with one of the 4 German networks.

They could try a bit harder than this, surely?

No wonder they were so keen to get into the market there

Per minute rates in France are still incredibly high... at that price in Italy we can almost do a videocall with 3G networks, but voice calls billed per second are around 25 cent/min.

Surprised Virgin Mobile FR did not go the direction they did in the UK and the US (don't know what they did in Canada and Australia) i.e. 0,42?/minute for the first 5 minutes of use each day and then, I don't know let's pick a figure, 0,14?/minute for the rest of the day. That would have shown them.

Incidentally, on the down side here, if my French is correct, you will be charged for calls to voicemail the regular per call charge whereas one of their talking points in the UK is free voice mail.

Oh well, can't have everything.

In France most people use postpaid.
Prepaid is usually more expensive and you don't get a great phone for near free on subscription.

But if you choose to top-up often you get better prices.
For instance with virgin if you top-up 20?/month you pay 0.27?/min.
If you choose postpaid you get the same rate + unlimited sms.

With Bouygues telecom prepaid, if you top-up with the highest recharge (75?)
with 2 times less validity (3month. so that's 25?/month). you will pay 17 cents/min.

French prepaid rates are more likely based on the abount yoou choose to recharge/month.
If you choose the minimum, rates are higher.


For instance with NRJ mobile, they don't have ending validity.
But their rates is 0.55?/min !
But if you pay 25? once for 6 month, you will cut the price in half (that's still high price i think however, but more affordable)

Call to voicemail is free in france, with all operator.


About virgin, they called me :

The phone menu can be in english, but the voice menu will still remain in French.
The 5? inclued with the sim is valid 1month.
There is free delivery, and you can it can be aboard.

One other quicky...and in reading the brochure and relying on my High School French which I studied many a moon ago, it seems that Virgin Mobile FR will be charging for voice mail....I know the other French carriers don't....you've done a lot of great work and I appreciate it.....at your leisure if you could check this out, it would be most appreciated.

Thank you so much.

Check voicemail is free, even if you don't have credit anymore.

Free only from France of course.

Since VM is launching France, it looks like they will be letting go of their network in the UK:

http://www.rcrnews.com/news.cms?newsId=26023