Report on using Orange Mobicarte in France
 

I've just spent 3 weeks in France. Lovely. Thanks to the info on these pages and elsewhere I purchased and used a prepaid Orange "mobicarte" - mainly for internet access from my iPhone. Here's a few observations from that experience to help others.

1. At the first Orange shop I went to in Paris the helpful and apparently well informed salesman was all apologetic that the Internet Max deal (9 Euro for 500 MB of data) doesn't apply to prepaid SIMs - only to long term contracts. Hmm! I re-read (and re-translated) all the info I had found and decided that I didn't agree! So I found another helpful salesman in another Orange shop. No problem! He sold me a Mobicarte for 30 Euro (with 5 Euro credit) and an extra 10 Euro credit and gave me all the advice and instruction I needed to get up and going.

2. Setting up Internet Max is easy. Dialling #123# lets you recharge with extra credit. Then you can work through the menu (in french) to purchase the internet max option. Wham - the 9 Euros disappears off your balance and you're ready to go!

3. I can't remember now but I don't think I had to tell my phone to use orange.fr as the APN. I think that happened automatically once I was on the Orange network.

4. Then I was surfing to my heart's content. Good 3G access in all the towns. Slower Edge access in the countryside. Great for maps and weather, etc, etc. Don't know what my total traffic would have been over the 3 weeks but reportedly the 500 MB is a "soft" limit anyway and is not strictly enforced except to prevent blatant abuse. Don't know if that's true.

5. Phone rates are not brilliant with the mobicarte but that wasn't its prime use.

6. What a shame that Apple has done dirty deals with the Telcos and won't allow Skype on their device. I did use the Skype web application "IM+ for Skype" quite a bit. This worked well but is not always cheap because you are paying for two Skype Out calls at once - OK if they are landlines but a bit Exy if they are both mobiles.

7. So Internet Max - great for internet. BUT BEWARE - HERE IS THE STING. The Orange salesman warned me that "email is expensive - better to use webmail (or equivalent) via internet". I didn't quite figure what he was saying. I was pulling email down manually and thought he was probably talking about the heavy use of push email so I wasn't too concerned .... but ... turns out there is a 10 MB limit on email under this internet max deal. After that, email starts eating phone credit. Worse than that, some correspondents report that all outgoing SMTP traffic is charged directly against the phone credit regardless of the 10 MB limit. In any event, email started eating my phone credit at a great rate.

8. No big deal. The safe option is to switch off email and use webmail (or equivalent) instead. Then you are home and hosed and can surf to your heart's content.

9. Validity of the mobicarte is an issue. Credit expires after a month or two depending on amount. I think there is also a 5 Euro per month minimum spend. Not a problem if you are using it continuously or for a short intense period but makes it no good for occasional intermittent use over several months.

10. Overall a good deal - especially for iPhone users or others wanting mobile internet.

I've got my "used" mobicarte (still with 9 Euros of credit) up for sale on ebay.com.au if anyone's interested.

Thanks for all that. It sounds better than my last experience of Mobicarte: http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/euro...rs-france.html - 2 years ago

The mobicarte I bought then, on ebay, way registered in somebody else's name, which gave me a lot of trouble. I never found a way of changing it. Whoever buys it from you might have the same problem.

Were you able to check how much data credit you had - online or by SMS?

Dave

I've been living in France since October 2008 and have been using a Mobicarte and was hit by that stupid mail overcharge -- twice! I ended up losing 80€ before I realized that for some godawful reason, Orange treats email differently than web traffic. So yeah, no Mail app on my unlocked iPhone for me -- Gmail thank you very much.

Also, if you buy a larger recharge card like 100€, where you get 150€ worth of credit, and you transfer some of that to a friend (5€, for ex), beware that that credit expires in a week. I learned that one the hard way too.

Orange has a current promotion for the new "Special Edition" Mobicarte where you pay 20€ of credit, then you get the option of free calls to Orange mobiles either 7h-17h during the week, 19h-00h during the week, or all day weekends. Not sure how long this one will last.

Also, I've got two Orange SIMs that I'll gladly send out from France in early May, or when I'm back Stateside in early May.

Thanks for the info, johnwt1951. I have a few questions, though.

I have an iPhone 3G from the States that I jailbroke and unlocked. Useful, since I'm studying in France for a semester. I was wondering:

How much is the cost of the mobicarte? I checked on their website and couldn't find 'le tarif' anywhere. Granted, I'm not completely fluent in French, but I understand most of what I read, and I could not find it. So, how much is the SIM card itself, and is there a link you could give me to find out exactly how much a minute or SMS costs?

Also, does Orange cover basically all of France? I am living in Angers near Nantes until June and I need a card I can use everywhere. Thanks for any help you can give me; it's greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Sam

Sammydems

Sorry to be slow replying.

The SIM itself cost 30 euro and that includes only 5 euro of credit.

You will find tariffs on http://animation.orange.fr/fis/mobicarte.pdf. I think that's still valid.

I had no trouble finding a network anywhere in France. In more remote areas it dropped back to EDGE not 3G.

Good luck.

DaveRo
Don't think the name should be an issue. I just recharged by buying credit at a Tabac. There was never a reason for my name to be needed.

Using an SSH session to a machine where you have shell access (like my server, in my basement) and setting up tunnels on ports 25, 110, 143 and 587 (143 and 587 work in my case, they're all I need) lets you route your email traffic over a different port (SSH standard port is 22) via your shell machine. That might be a way around it.

I've used this several times where WiFi access restricts email access.

I will be in France for three months starting mid-July and may be interested in your SIMs. Please email me at jhanlon [at] comcast [dot] net

Jim Hanlon

This is exactly what I'm looking for to access internet and email while on holidays later in June/July.

The 10Mb for email traffic is a bit limiting though. Anyone know how thats measured, i.e. is it SMTP traffic or is it traffic via a specific port?

Or are there any rumours of that 10Mb limit being scrapped?

(Incidentally I bought a mobicarte from ebay.fr but cannot recharge (add credit) it. I get the following message (via the orange website):

"Vous devez avoir 1 mois d'ancienneté sur votre compte pour pouvoir utiliser le service rechargement illico"

That seems to say that I need to use the service for a month first??? With only €5 of credit??

My understanding is that you can get Skype running on an iPhone by using one of the programs for jailbroken iPhones that allows a 3g connection to masquerade as a wifi connection.

See generally: http://www.iphonehacks.com/2009/01/v...gedgegprs.html

The message says you can't recharge online but only with scratch cards in the firs month.

Ah, perfect. I'm not going till end of June so I can recharge in a month and still be setup for when I arrive.

Thank you.

You're welcome! :)

Just noticed a similar offering from Bouygues Telecom:

Offres Internet Mobile - Option Web & Mail - Internet Mobile - Bouygues Telecom

Is that a better alternative to the Orange Internet max option, seems to have no restriction on emails? And comes "sans engagement"

The option is "sans engagement" but you can activate it only on a postpaid contract. :(

Orange vs SFR vs Bouygues coverage
 

In the USA, coverage and quality of signal differ dramatically by carrier. I've read that Bouygues is the newest, smallest and most likely of the three main carriers to not provide a cell signal when you need it.

But prepaid rates for Bouygues are significantly lower than Orange, and I'm certainly tempted. But...if my wife or teenage boys don't have a signal when they want/need it I'll regret the theoretical € savings!

We'll be spending a week in Provence (along the coast, Nice to Aix-en-Provence, centered in La Croix Valmer), and we'll then spend a week in Paris.

I'd guess that within Paris all three carriers will be fine....but does anyone have any experience along the Riviera with Orange vs. Bouygues???

Thanks much for any help!

Be seeing you,
Denis

Im using the mobicarte with Internet Max option (posting using it right now :))
The salespeople are indeed completely clueless about it, so might as well not even bother asking.
Everything works fine for me, aside from the data transfer speeds, which are terrible. Im in Paris, my phone supports every fancy transfer protocol known (nokia 5800XM), it shows a 3.5G icon next to the network, but I'm getting 400-500kbit/sec speeds at most. 3.5G should mean 10-20 times that. Any ideas? Its absolutely crucial for me to get at least 1mbit speeds.

Meko, can you update regarding direct HTML (Web) browsing (ie not through the Orange portal), and regarding emailing costs and feasibility? (ie POP3, IMAP4, Gmail...)

Thanks.

Dont know about pop/imap, I use web-based gmail (the phone app doesnt work for me, dont know why, it asks for my password on every page. way too annoying).
"orange portal"? They set some orange page as my homepage when they entered the settings on my phone at the store (hint: save yourself a few hours and do it yourself), but the browsing is just normal browsing. And it works (apart from being slow).

thanks all, this thread has been very informative. i am going to france next month and was wondering how easy it would be to setup my iphone to have a local number while i'm there.

Update on Internet Max option:
- costs 12 EUR (Orange Shop, Corsica)
- have to manually activate new access point (settings were set up automatically) on Nokia, Symbian

I'm selling my Mobicarte SIM if anyone interested:
http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/buy-...te-france.html

Gosh, why couldn't I have discovered this website before i went o europe 3 weeks ago????

I bought the mobicarte but because of the clueless orange reps, I did not get internet because they said i couldn't. a whole week without internet!!

By the way I was charged 20euro for the card that came with 5 or 10 euro of calltime (probably 5 euro).

Can someone elaborate on the process of getting the internet? If i don't speak French, how hard is it to understand the telephone menu to pay for it? maybe someone can outline the numbers to press (although it may change) at each menu?

Thanks!

(O2 in UK was so much better!!)

by the way while I was in district 1 in paris and had a O2 UK card roaming, it always picked Bourgues over orange or SFR, since it always had a stronger signal with bouygues, but it may have been where i was at.

I see that the Option Internet Max now says that email (POP3 etc.) is no longer available. However there is an option "mail illimite" available for €9 per month which gives unlimited email access.

I presume both can be bought together and used that way?

mail option:

http://www.orange.fr/bin/frame.cgi?u...s/options.html

Well, I just got home from a week in Paris.

In the 2nd day there I found an Orange shop (seems that there're aren't that many around, at least not in the areas I visited), and I purchased a SIM card (it cost 15EUR) and an 25EUR refill card.

Initially the guy didn't know what I was talking about (regardind a pre-paid SIM), but after I showed him a printout from this site and some of the "internet max" option, he finally got it.

He also proposed purchasing a 3G/EDGE USB plug (like a disk-on-key), which could also be refilled, but I explained I need it for my PDA, so this option wasn;t applicable for me.

In any case, for some reason or other they weren't able to turn on the internet max option in that occasion, so I went on using the refill card, hoping that it would hold for a couple of days.
Sadly, the credit was eaten up pretty quickly.

I tried setting up the internet max option by myself, using the (free) SMS menu system that Orange uses in France, but wasn't able to.
So I then called (at a charge of 0.37EUR/min) the Orange support, but they told me that I needed to go to an Orange store to turn on the Internet max option, and then it'd take at least 2 days for it to be useable (she didn't explain why). And since I had only 2 days left, I gave up on it and purchased another refill card.

I can report that reception is pretty good in all the areas I visited (which is most of the tourist areas in Paris).

Further, there are quire a few free Wifi hotspots, so I used them whenever I could.

I wanted to thank all the members here who helped me prior to my visit to France.

Orangr France Internet settings: orange, orange, orange
 

Before I purchased Internet Max, I wanted to make sure I could use the internet at all... Didn't work automatically, so I tried orange.fr as access point as mentioned earlier; no go. Searched on web and found following:

MXit Forum • View topic - APN (Access Point Name) Settings

Basically, for Orange personal, access point is just "orange". Web site says orange for username and password as well; that worked for me.

Happy surfing all!

I had that exact 100E problem. I got a Iphone, unlocked and jailbroken from the united states and arrived to france one week ago. I charged the mobicarte with the 100E +50 free. I got the credit and everything was ok until yesterday I Realize my account was empty when I NEVER used the internet connection of the phone (nor the internet apps). Besides that I went and checked on Orange.fr personal account info and it stated that I was wired to the internet at some hours where i was asleep. My mail was iphone configurated though ( even before I came back to France) and I just wrote to service clientele about this issue.

Has anyone got to solve the problem? and has orange given them their money back ( since i never requested an cellular internet connection service for my simcard). Can anyone explain me how do I AVOID the iphone going on the internet without me asking ( I am only interested in using just thE wifi connection from my house's and workplace's modem) I mean i don't want the phone to be connecting to 3G or EDGE or just INTERNET unless I ask him to.

Thank you, I would really appreciate some help on this issue since I am not a cellphone "connaisseur" and usually this kind of phone bill issues in France are complicated ( and I need and want to have my money reimbursed) since those 100E is what I spend in 6 months of cellphone communications and I happen to be a not wealthy person at all. Thanks again

Availability update? Tethering/hotspot use?
 

Availability update (October 2009):
Does anyone have any more current information on this offer? The initial post is from Feb 2009 and a scan of this thread and other sites say it is/was 9€/mo, then there's a post above to suggest it's now 12€, in Corsica at least, and for some it's not or no longer available. From Orange's website, the Internet Max option I only find as a daily add-on for 3€, on Mobicarte. I'm going to France next week and am ordering a Mobicarte on the web - it's 15€ including delivery and 5€ credit from Orange's website - and I'll be happy to report back at a later date but for now I'm just wondering if anyone has in the last month activated Internet Max at 9€/mo and how - via their phone (is it straightforward to avg/non-fluent French speakers?) or at an Orange Shop?

Email: Does anyone know if the S60 Gmail app uses one of the "charging" ports for email usage? Even if secure ports like 993, 587, or 465 are available and charge-free?

Connect PC via tethering or hotspot: Has anyone successfully used their mobile either as a bluetooth modem to connect their laptop to the web (tethering), or even create a WiFi hotspot using an app like JoikuSpot? I would have thought the latter is possible, but tethering I don't know.

Thanks for any input!

I am intersesting also:eek:

Can you give us the result what it is now on MOBICARTE?

TX a lot:beer:

This post
Mobicarte Orange [topic unique] - Page : 27 - GSM - Technologies Mobiles - FORUM HardWare.fr
suggests that internet max is no longer available with mobicarte.

TX a lot, thas what I was thinking:ranting:

Thanks for the info. I am now in France where I picked up a new mobicarte SIM card on ebay for 8€ including 5€ credit, delivery and registration in my name so that was good. I couldn't find the monthly internet max option and I'm nowhere near an Orange shop so I took today on the 3€ daily option (which works really well) and found these replies. Well, that is a shame but it doesn't surprise me - it really was too good a deal in comparison to some of the PC USB dongle deals. Anyway it appears the evening option is still available (6€/mo) so I guess I'll have to take that restricted route and take a daily max for the more important days.

it's cost me 70 euros to find out that internet max is no longer available.

boutique orange - particuliers - mobicarte

At 50c a minute and 15c a kb for mail it didn't take long.
If I can't use the internet at a reasonable price I will no longer use Orange in France where I live part of the time. Lousy product knowledge in orange shops makes moving easier.
I've been using the mobicarte in my iPhone for a couple of years so Orange lose and I lose. Making data cheaper, not more expensive should be the way they are going.
O2 in Ireland charge 99c per day for 50gb but only on the days you connect so that suits me fine

they're a real con - even a 4k single use costs a minimum 50c - I forgot about the A-GPS and two short hits totalling no more than 10kb cost 1 euro. Only way to go is to sign up for the 3 euro per day before you connect.

Prepaid Sim France
 

I am traveling to France in July 2010 with my unlocked Iphone. I do not
> necessarily need a sim for telephone calls but I do need a sim for the data so I can use my
> apps on my Iphone. I saw on this forum that newest entry date was 21/01/09 which is not
> very useful since plans change. Do you have an update for the carrier SFR. Or any other suggestions in prepaid cards in France??
>
> On a different subject that may help you. I am going to London and
> found a cheap unlimited Data sim for the carrier O2. I found it on
> ebay.co.uk I received it and it works fine as a phone and data sim but I do not think it will work in France for free data There are several for sale
> on that site costing about $50, which for unlimited data and a prepaid
> phone service is not a bad deal. Wish I could find the same in France,
> any ideas?::o a reply to my email would be wonderful hansenrj@aol.com
>

What's the consensus? Avoid Orange? Same here that we are using mobile data mostly for GPS and Assisted GPS so would be very small amounts of data at a time, very frequently. It sounds like Orange should be avoided.

993, 465, ... are definitively not charge free, avoid these ports or inscribe the mail option for 9 Euro/Month :(

Strange, I still can see this option in my #123# menu
However do not have enough credit now and will check it tonight

Spent 2 weeks in France
Orange offered the amazing quality and coverage
I can confirm that Internet Max option for Euro 12 still exist. However doesn't include POP3/SMTP/IMAP. Therefore please also order MAIL bundle for Euro 9 or use VPN/OpenVPN to access your email box.
p.s. Traffic has been definitely calculated (500Mb per month)
Good luck!

Orange in Monaco
 

Is anyone aware of Orange treats Monaco separately for usage. I'll be spending 5 days in France, and 5 days in Monaco, and would like to use a Mobicarte SIM for both. I've had trouble searching for this, as its appears Monaco is the same of a SIM card as well.