Data in France [merged]
 

I've had a look in the lists of operators and also looked at their sites, but it seems that the cost of data connections in France is still rather expensive when using pre pay, especially when compared to T-Mobile's £1 per day maximum!

Are there any secrets out there?

In France it's better (and cheapier) to have a post paid sim;)

I posted almost the identical question six months ago and didn't get any solutions. The new ICQSim from United Mobile doesn't seem to offer data in France (even though it covers much of the EU). About the best I could come up with was a borrowed Free password and the US of their rather wide wifi net. Boingo Mobile has phone plan which you gives you use of their worldwide wifi network which includes 10,000 spots in France for roughly US$8 a month.

http://mobile.boingo.com/locations/?pgt=results&cnty=FR

I know you'd prefer 3g to wifi, but I struck out looking for 3g deals in France. I'm going to be there over the summer so I still have my ear to the ground.

Data are available on the Vodafone networks.
And Mobilkom Liechtenstein has no roaming agreements with SFR...:confused:

Best UK Data Roaming in France
 

My best friend is going to spend several months in France this year in medium term accommodations in two different parts of the country. He needs laptop access to e-mail and low bandwith browsing (commercial database access -- no heavy high-end graphics)

He has good UK credit. None of the French cards appear to even offer data functions. I was wondering if anyone had any opinion about any UK operator's who had roaming in France. It looked like Vodaphone's Mobile Broadband had okish dataroaming in France.

Does anyone know anything about this?

http://mobilesociety.typepad.com/mob...ible-fran.html

Compared to offers that are appearing in other countries, including on prepaid, with 1 GB or more for roughly €20 to €30, that doesn't look so good, but if your friend only wants email access maybe it will be enough

Follow up Voice Question: Are there any True UK providers (e.g. not Jersey or IOM) which have free incoming and decent outgoing rates in France? 3 looks like the best so far, but I was wondering about the MVNO's.

Turning back to Data. I pay $19 US a month for unlimited with TMobile USA. While the network is 2.5g, I could download bit torrents and they wouldn't care. (I'll be reading War & Peace while I wait). While the connection speed is only EDGE, it will be 3g in just a couple of months.

When I go to Dubai, however, that same $19 will only get me 20 megs with one of the two carriers. The other is twice that. Everything is relevant.

There have been two to three threads on data in France and no one has had any great ideas. I'm all ears on this one.

Most of the mvno ones are the same as the Eurotariff. Yes, 3 is cheaper than Eurotariff with 10p incoming, or there's Vodafone Passport, but I also like O2's My Europe Extra: £10 a month fee gets 25p/min outgoing, free incoming, maybe with separate callback

France Data Roaming
 

My understanding of the France Telecom/Orange deal is that you are limited to the Orange mobile portal (the equivalent to 'Orange World' in the UK) and are not allowed to use your phone as a modem. The small quantity of data included in the plan would soon be used up if you did in any case. Basically it's designed for internet access on your phone.

Better would be the sim cards available from the Auchan supermarket chain, which are designed for full laptop access. Although not cheap by UK standards, they appear to be a much better deal than anything else available in France. See here.

The €29.90 card seems to include 50MB, subject to a maximum 5 hours connection time. A €25 top-up from one of the shops gets you the same, and must be used within 45 days. Higher (and slightly better) value top-ups can only be bought via the mobile portal. This might mean needing a french debit card or address. I hope to find out when I get to France next week.

I've been living part of the time in France over the past 7 months and the solution I've ended up using is o2 with the MyEuropeExtra add-on combined with returncall.co.uk for voice calls and a prepaid 3 (UK) sim for occasional data usage. The data on 3 (UK) costs £3 per MB roaming in France and for simple email or occasional light web browsing I've found it far more convenient and better value than any of the French prepaid offers with their extremely restrictive topup voucher expiry. I've ended up losing all my credit due to missing the topup deadline so many times I just got sick of them and the rip-off charges. Ironically several of my French friends have started using this same solution as it's cheaper for them than using French sims :-)!

On thing I've recently discovered is the supermarket chain "E Leclerc" has launched an MVNO that as far as I know has a voucher expiry of 1 year. Sadly data rates are ridiculous, something like €15/MB, so it's only good for the occasional visitor wanting a French mobile that doesn't die every few months.

I use mobile 2.5g and 3g data roaming a lot and I have found that the following to be one of the best offer around:

http://www.vox.lu/maincontent.aspx?p...er&magickey=13

(click on the top left corner flag to change language to English).

Prepaid data roaming is 6.3€ in the EU and it's not that competitive maybe, but the postpaid packages are really cheap (I use the World Data 500 which gets me 500 Mb in roaming for 230€).

Sadly, unused Mb cannot be rolled over.

That's 46c/Mb

Alternatively, WD250 has 250Mb for 144€ (58c/Mb) and WD50 has 50Mb for 46€ (92c/Mb).

NB: the above rates are only valid while roaming in the EU, US and China.

I have never asked (I live in Luxembourg) but I am sure that they wouldn't mind activating the above postpaid offers to foreigners. Most of their subscribers are actually people living accross the border (Luxembourg is a small country).

In fact, vox also has a roaming deal for the above people: 10€/month you get free incoming calls on the French Orange network and 24c outgoing to French and Luxebourg.

Unfortunately: both offers are postpaid (ie, you need to come to Lux to subscribe and provide a credit card). Cheap things don't come easy...

E. Leclerc Mobile France
 

Oh yes. They are not so bad for a "one time" visit.



WAP : 0,015 €/ko par 10 ko indivisibles

French advices
 

For just data, there are no interessant prepaid plan in france. Our market is oriented on postpaid offers with a 24 month contract.
ex bouygyues telecom illimited 3G edge (5GO) on 29,90 Euros/month

Just for several months Data isn't affordable but there are some agreements with Vodafone and Sfr in france with passport data

Orange UK is completely separated from orange france leader in the country si you will paid for data.

You can check prepaid offers in france on

• virgin mobile
• ten
• tele2 mobile
• a mobile
• carrefour mobile
• U mobile
• nrj mobile
• universal mobile
• coriolis telecom
• leclerc mobile
• simpleo
• mobisud
• transatel
• mobiho
• zemobile
• call in europe
• fnac mobile
• M6 mobile
• etc...:confused:

When I went to France last summer I accessed the web with an Orange Mobicarte (prepaid SIM sold for < € 10 at eBay.fr). After activating the tariff option "Internet Max" (€ 9/month) you officially get a data volume of 500MB for the web + 10 MB for eMail (SMTP, POP3, IMAP), both for handset-based use only. But actually, as I expected due to reports on German forums, access was neither limited to handset-usage, nor did the cap of 500MB apply. Only the 10MB-limit for eMail seemed to be enforced. Even HSDPA and EDGE were available and provided decent data rates. So that's an interesting offer if you don't generate much traffic.
More info at France - Orange - Prepaid Wireless Internet Access

France and Data
 

My best friend is returning for his annual month in France and is looking (again) for a decent prepaid wireless data option. Last year, he used Orange France and his experience was so far beyond disappointing that I can't begin to tell. Any other options out there?

There's a prepaid SFR offer costing 26 euros for 8 hours of internet use.
It's cheaper that the Orange one.

Hi maccoy,

Where can the SFR SIM cards be purchased? eg in the airport?

I'll be in France next month and I need a SIM which supports GPRS (DATA) for browsing, emails, etc.

And another question, is free WIFI widely available in France?

Thanks.

Usually there are no mobile operators shops in the airports.
You can buy a sim card for data in any phone shop exposing the operator logo.

WIFI is widely available but it isn't always free.
It is usually free in the libraries (within a limited connection time), Mcdonalds and Starbucks shops.
Elsewhere (bars) you may have to ask the waiters for acces codes.

Not a France sim, but tmobile UK has a OK data rate in all of EU. I think it's about 1.5 pound/MB or so. Thought I'd menton in case you can't find anything cheaper.

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/g...ountry/france/

Edit: Added link and changed UK to EU.

Best deal for WiFi use in France and Europe is Boingo Global. US$59/month gets you 2000 minutes of use at a whole bunch of WiFi networks.

Thank you all for your help
 

I'll be in France for 1 week only, and I plan to use my PDA mostly for browsing/emails, so I need to find the cheapest deal around.

On the other hand, if there's the possibility of paying a couple extra Euro and having a large amount of MB, it might be a good deal for me.

I visit the UK quite often, and the data costs there are pressty expensive.
On the other end of the scale, I visited Thailand last month, and could do heavy browsing for 2-3 days on a $8 refill...

Another question, please
 

I've been in contact with leclercmobile.fr, and they say their SIM card supports browsing via WAP.
"The offer E.LECLERCMOBILE allows you to connect in sites wap but not directly in web sites."

But I need HTML browsing, and I can't seen to find a SIM card that does this.
And the browsing would be done over GPRS (in case ob absence of WIFI).

My French is rather dusty, so I might be misunderstanding the descriptions.

I'd appreciate any clarifications on this.


Thanks.

Have a look at this site for an explanation (in English) of one offering from Orange: France - Orange - Prepaid Wireless Internet Access

It seems both offers to be no longer available...

maccoy, so what are the available options (that enable GPRS/3G-based browsing)?
Again, only PAYG.
Thank you.

I was just looking at the Orange Internet site...
There is a new "Internet Max" option for 12€ a month (6€ for two month if activated by June 17th).
It is almost the same as the old "Internet Max" and mails are not included.
And the "Découverte Multimedia" option is still available for the Mobicarte (PAYG) customers.

I"m not quite clear on these options.
Do you mean that the internet max option allows only browsing but not emails?
I apologize for all these questions, but again, my French is very rusty.

For both options, you can browse with your PDA but you can't download your e-mails.

:eek:
This is strange indeed!
How then can I retrieve my emails?
I mean, in my case I can access the emails through OWA, but this is VERY cumbersome (I have GMAIL, POP3 and IMAP accounts).
For me the best way is using the built-in email (or any other email tool).

You can retrieve your e-mails using a webmail address.

Ok,
Thanks.

What about VPNing your PDA or if you can setup an alternate port for your mail server?

Please explain, Stu.

If they are surcharging e-mail, they are probably looking at the standard POP3, IMAP, and probably Activesync ports. If you set up a VPN or find alternate ports for your mail server, it will be harder (but not impossible) for Orange to identify your behavior as retrieving e-mail. On Microsoft push devices, it would be child's play to set up a PPTN VPN and run your e-mail retrieval through that.

what is "Découverte Multimedia" ? Is the Internet Max not available with mobicarte anymore (described in another thread)?