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.